


Athazagroaphobia

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous Horror, Chains, Gen, Infection, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Horror, Mental Breakdown, Possession, Spiritual Infection, Starvation, Survival, Survival Horror, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, cosmic horror, eldritch horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22124581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: After the Agni Kai, Azula is left chained to the grate, forgotten.
Comments: 50
Kudos: 106





	1. Tethered

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a prompt for Goretober 2019.

Azula falls limp, her cheek pressed against the grate she is chained to. She doesn’t know for how long she has been there. Her throat is still raw and burned from screaming fire, so it couldn’t have been that long. But her arms and legs are sore and have long since fallen asleep and the guards had enough time to put up a gate as an extra precaution until they had time to pick her up. So it couldn’t have been short either. 

She lets out another choked sob. She just wishes that someone would come for her already, the position she is in is beginning to cut off her circulation. 

Day turns to night and Azula takes it upon herself to shift positions. The blood begins flowing better--brining with it a horribly painful pins and needles sensation that shoots up and down her arms and legs. For this she has traded the comfort of her joints. 

Another hour passes and she is completely agonized. 

Despite her already aching throat, she screams. Perhaps if she screamed loud enough they would come for her. 

But they don’t. 

She cries herself to sleep and she wakes with her cheek against the bars of the grate. She heaves herself upright and lets out another sob. Have they forgotten her? How dare they forget her? She is their princess. 

She _was_ their princess. 

What is she now? 

Apparently, an object to be discarded and tethered to a grate. 

She yanks fruitlessly at her chains. The only thing it does is break skin. She hisses as the first droplets of blood spill. 

Her second day chained to the grate turns into a third; she is growing hungry and her dry throat is in dire need of water. 

She thinks of drinking from the stagnant puddle before it evaporates. 

On the fourth day she does drink from the puddle. 

It tastes absolutely foul but dehydration has been even more unpleasant. 

She resists the urge to weep again, she needs to retain every drop of water that she can. 

Azula doesn’t have a clue as to where she will get food, but her belly rumbles and she knows that she needs it soon. She is growing weaker by the hour and the late-summer sun leaves her feeling nauseous. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to weather it out. 

The fifth day leaves her angry. 

She screams and curses and and punches the ground until her knuckles are as raw as her wrists. “I’ll kill you Zuzu!” She vows. “I’ll kill the fucking water peasant too! Everyone. I’ll burn everyone alive…” her mind unravels further than it had already. 

She doesn’t know it is is the isolation or the starvation but it makes her yell and holler to herself and beat her own head against the grate. “You’re next, Zuzu.” She mumbles to herself as she hits her head again. “This is what I’m going to do to you and the peasant.” Another hard bash and she is sleeping for the first time in days. 

Azula knows that she put herself out for a few days because her hunger is almost unbearable and her throat is bone dry again. She supposes she is lucky; a light rain falls. She laps at the puddle the micro-storm is creating. She feels like an animal. She practically is one. 

Her anger subsides to sorrow. Given a new source of water, she allows herself to weep again. She knows that she has done some awful things but she doesn’t think that she deserves this. 

She wonders if her father is being treated as inhumanely. 

Perhaps he is already dead. 

“I’m sorry.” She whispers to no one, face against the grate once more. “I’ll be good, Zuzu, just let me come home.” She nuzzles her cheek against the grate, the metal is cool against her skin. “You can have the crown, just let me come home.” 

The day after, she hardly moves. She doesn’t have the energy for it anymore. Her stomach is so empty that it doesn’t even hurt anymore. She would be thankful, if the realization weren’t so horrible. 

Azula thinks that, by the time they are done punishing her, that she may grow gaunt enough to slip from the chains on her own. 

She gives it a try, but she hasn’t grown that thin yet. 

The day after that blesses her with an elephant-rat. 

She doesn’t really think too much of it. 

She only thinks that she needs something to eat…

It tastes just about as good as the stagnant puddle had, but at least she has a little something to slow her starvation. Still chained, she cannot clean her mouth so the elephant-rat’s blood coagulates around her mouth and on her chin. 

She is a filthy mess, she is hardly human. 

This is what they have reduced her to. 

She never thought that Zuko had it in him. 

Azula cackles madly to herself. It is all she can do. She lets herself succumb to the madness. The very madness that has landed her here. She talks to them freely now, as if hallucination Zuko will unchain her if she insults him or apologizes to him enough. 

When talking to Zuko doesn’t work she tries her mother and then her father. And then TyLee. 

She doesn’t bother with Mai or the water peasant; they never help. 

In another day, she is back to lapping at the remains of stagnant puddles. 

She doesn’t think that she has ever been this cruel to anyone. 

Her servants may not have been invited to the royal feasts, but they had never been forced to eat rodents or drink sludge. 

They had shelter, perhaps not the luxurious quarters and plush pillows that she had, but they still had beds. They’d never had to sleep on the ground until their bones went stiff. 

They had a proper place to relieve themselves, they never had to fester in their own filth. 

She hears footsteps that night and perks up. The hope leaves her jittery. “Zuko?” She tries softly, not that she could get her voice above that. She hears shuffling and a pounding on the gate. She tries to peer up and see who it is but her position and the chains don’t allow for it. 

The footsteps retreat, apparently they were just checking on her. 

She begins to sob again. Maybe they’ll come back and free her if they realize that she is still human, that she can still feel. Even if she is insane, she is still only a lost and, admittedly, frightened teenager. 

Whoever had been there had less compassion than she. 

Another few days later, Azula finds herself longing for the sewer pentapus that swim beneath her. The rushing water mocks her. All of that food and water, right there but she cannot get to it. By Agni, she knows that it is sewer water and that, lately it has been smelling more and more rotten, but her body craves anything to keep it going. 

She yanks at the chains and bursts into tears when her hands come free. She lies there wracked with tears born of a mixture of stress, disbelief, and relief. Her entire body shudders, she doesn’t know what to do from here. She didn’t think that she would get this far. 

Azula doesn’t know if she should yell at Zuko or simply let her tears keep falling and ask him why he had left her to die like that. 

On shaky, and unsteady legs, she stands. She hasn’t used them in so long that they buckle. It doesn’t help that she hasn’t eaten in so long. She decides that, that is what she will do first. She will get herself a real meal and a real drink. 

She will have a bath. 

She will comb her hair and put on her makeup.

She will have a change of clothes. 

She will make herself feel human again. 

Azula gives a weary and tired smile. The thought of it all, of being able to meet her basic needs once more, leaves her feeling warmer than firebending ever had. 

Still, she lacks strength. Just opening the gate takes so much of her. 

She wanders through Capital City dazed, confused, and disoriented. She wonders what time it is, she can’t find a soul in the streets. Her foot falls seem to echo. It is so silent. Has it always been so silent?

She comes to a halt. Come to think of it, save for that one person and her own distressed noises, she hasn’t heard a sound. Her father had just been defeated shouldn’t there have been fireworks, the sound of celebration. 

Azula takes a deep breath and wanders further into the capital. Tables upon tables and chairs have been set up. Tattered banners and streamers blow lazily in the air. There are indeed preparations for a celebration. 

Perhaps her mind is more frayed than she thought. Perhaps her insanity has made her time spent locked up seem longer than it was. 

Azula shakes her head and looks at her hands. She has grown so small and so frail that she knows that she has definitely been chained for a while. “Zuko?” She calls. She only receives an answer in the form of an echo. The only other sound is that of those banners flapping in the wind. 

“Zuzu…” She tries again, knowing very well that he is not around. 

She takes a few more clumsy steps, nearly tripping over a dislodged brick. She scans the tables for something to eat. Everything is rotten and hosting an assortment of maggots and flies. She recoils at the sight and loses her footing. She staggers back, further. 

She had been so scared that they had abandoned her that she hadn’t considered fearing that they hadn’t abandoned her at all. 


	2. Animalistic

There isn’t a morsel on any of the tables that hasn’t been infested and over taken by some form of larva. It is all rot and decay and smells putridly under the summer sun. Azula shambles her way around the tables, clumsy with hunger. She doesn’t know how much she has left in her but she doesn’t think that it is very much at all. 

There has to be something, anything to eat. She scours her way through the tables. The only thing left untouched by the pests has been claimed by mold. She almost wants to pick off the good parts and eat those. Instead she clutches her stomach and falls to her knees. 

If they are trying to break her, it has worked. She had been broken from the start. She shakes her head, she has already established that they haven’t abandoned her, that something more is at work. But it is much easier to cling to the idea that if she makes a pathetic, pitiful enough spectacle, some sympathetic soul will emerge and end the rouse. She can suffer the humiliation and move forward. 

The only souls to come forward were those that belonged to the elephant-rats. They have taken a liking to her legs. She jerks and almost kicks them away from her. She swallows and resigns herself to what she must do. In one less than elegant motion, Azula scorches them all. 

She finds that cooked elephant-rat meat is more tolerable than eating it raw but, Agni, do they taste abysmal. Even so, she searches the ground for more of them. She promises herself that this will be the last time, that she only needs to eat enough of them to get her to the palace to find a true meal. One that is fit for someone of her status. She chars two more elephant-rats and forces herself to swallow them, all but their hideous little tails. Her stomach squirms at the thought of those wriggling around in her mouth. She fights the urge to eject the only meal she has had in days...or however long it has been. 

She gives herself a moment before rising up and hoisting herself into a chair. She leans back, feeling wholly exhausted. The sun beats mercilessly on her face. It is almost enough to keep her awake. Almost. 

Even the sun isn’t quite as powerful as stress and fatigue. 

Azula succombs. 

She hopes to herself that when she wakes it will be in her own bed with her father hollering at her for pestering him with her nightmare induced screams. What she does wake to is far less pleasant. That horrific perfume of rotting meat is the first thing that greets her, followed by a view of the palace dauntingly far off in the distance. 

With some of her vigor restored, she rises from the chair and resigns herself to the task of getting to it.

Every step is torture, her body feels so heavy for something that is so emincipated. Her joints are still stiff and fragile from being confined to such a brutal position. And her skin...her skin is her own doing. She had been fool enough to fall asleep under the sun’s harsh rays. Elephant-rats or no elephant-rats, her stomach still aches terribly and her mouth is raw and parched. 

She forces herself onward, it is all she can do. All she can do until it is wholly automatic; one sluggish foot in front of the other. Left foot, right foot, breathe. Left foot, right foot, breathe. Left foot, right foot…

She trips, her knees smack against the pavement. She lets out a cry to match the sharpness of the sensation in her knee. She is reminded of the eerie silence of the city as her cry rebounds between the buildings before it dies out. Azula shudders. She tries scrambling to her feet but her kneecaps are at the end of their resilience. 

But Azula is not.

Not yet.

She drags herself across the street. It takes up far more energy than it had to walk and her elbows are becoming as raw as her scabbed wrists. She is painfully aware that she has been reduced to some barbaric and primitive version of herself that runs on desperate instinct alone. 

It takes her what must have been hours to reach the outskirts of the palace courtyard and by this time she has come to accept that she is no longer a human being. She doesn’t know what she has morphed into, but it is dirty and pathetic and monstrous. 

She lets out a befitting anguished, animalistic howl when she finds herself face to face with a gate. 

“No.” She utters quietly to herself. “No, no.” She repeats as she gives the gate a few violent shakes. She can’t reach the lock from where she lays. “No…” she growls, her anger leaves just enough room for her to latch onto the gate and use it to heave herself up right. Her knees are furious and they make it known. She ignores the pain and fusses with the gate’s latch. Having been leaning on it for support, she is thrown to the ground when it swings in. 

Her breathing is rapid and erratic as she continues her crawl towards the palace. She remembers the stairs and wants to weep. There are so many of them. So many stairs. And they are huge stairs. 

“Oh for Agni’s sake! Chan, what did I tell you about leaving the fucking gates open!” 

“Sorry.” Chan mutters. 

“Sorry?” She hears the crunch of gravel as the man nears her. “One of them things got in.” He nudges her with something. A staff? 

‘Thing’. The word works its way into her brain. It is too much, what remains of her psyche shatters. She is weeping again, but it is more like a wheeze with her throat in the shape that it is. 

“Ho-ly shit.” Chan remarks. 

“It’s...she’s human.” Remarks the other. 


	3. Thing

Azula awakens with a plush pillow beneath her head and wrapped in luxurious blankets, upon a cushy mattress. It doesn’t take her long to realize that she is in her own bed. She breathes a sigh of relief, momentarily letting herself believe that she had never left it at all. That she will go to her closet, dress herself, and head off to her own coronation as it is truly supposed to happen. But she finds that she cannot get up at all. She can’t feel her right leg, the one that had taken the brunt of her fall. 

She inhales, she supposes that she should count herself lucky that she has made it back to the palace and that they--whoever they may be--have taken the liberty and have had the consideration to cleanse and dress her wounds. 

To the best of their ability, anyhow. The bandages, she notices, look to be makeshift. Some of them are real, others are just tightly bound strips of cloth. She narrows her eyes; this is how they are treating their fire lord. No, their princess. No…

She swallows, this is how they treat the defeated. 

Against her better judgement, she uses the bed posts to get to her feet and using the wall for balance she makes a one legged hop towards the door. She feels foolish. 

The again, she supposes that only a fool would try walking with a freshly broken leg and one badly bruised and swollen one. 

Azula makes it to the door. 

“Waoh, what are you doing?” 

She recognizes the boy in the doorway. He is the very same Chan that she had met on Ember Island. She eyes him sternly. He sets a tray of food onto the floor. Too late she realizes that he had just made armspace for her. Even if she’d connected the dots on time, she could do nothing about it. 

“You know that your leg is broken right, and that the other one is in pretty bad shape too?” He tucks her back under the covers. “Actually, pretty much all of you is in bad shape right now.”

“I’ve made note and have elected to walk anyhow.” 

He picks up the food tray and a cup and sets it on her nightstand. “You couldn’t have at least waited for lunch?” 

“I want to know what’s going on.”

“More than you want...need an edible meal?”

Azula hesitates and picks up the bun closest to her hand. Edible is an adequate word, it is only that; the bread is stale. Stale but safe to consume, so she does. It is only one thing but her stomach already feels less achy. 

The rest of the food is also pretty poor in quality. But it is on par with the royal banquets in comparison to the elephant-rats. She eats rather quickly, greedily. She doesn’t bother asking where her silverwear is. She knows that it is rather undignified, but her body craves the sustenance that it has been denied. “What are you staring at?” She asks crossly. 

Chan lifts his hands. “Sorry. I’d rather look at you than out the window or something.”

“Then stare at the ceiling.” She requests, not that it matters anymore, he has already seen her unbecomingly twice over. She reaches for the the cup and relieves her dry throat. Her face scrunches. This water has the same quality of those stagnant puddles, perhaps only a tad better. 

“So I’ve lost.” She notes. “Zuzu is the Fire Lord and I get chained to a grate and left to die. I’m a prisoner now?”

“You...you don’t know?” 

Azula stares unblinkingly and waits for him to elaborate. 

She doesn’t want him to though. She wants to believe that she is simply a prisoner because she can escape that. She can come back from that. 

“You were out there and you really don’t know.” 

She swallows, she can feel her mind fraying a little more. She almost tells him that she has a pretty good idea of what he’s implying. Instead she feigns complete ignorance, “I know that I was defeated and that I’ve lost my title. Zuko is the Fire Lord and I…”

“There is no Fire Lord.” Chan stares at his palms. “There’s no anybody. We don’t even know if Zuko is still alive.” He pauses. “Ruon and I took the palace because it was empty. There are a few more of us taking refuge here…”

Azula stares into her half drained cup. She is feeling fatigued all over again. She still hasn’t decided which outcome would have been worse; finding that her sanity had lapsed worse than she imagined or the reality of her nation having fallen with her. The notion that she had been abandoned or the notion that there was no one left to unchain her. 

It doesn’t matter which she deems is worse. It is what it is. 

She still doesn’t feel as though her head is in the right place, not even close; there is now backing for her paranoia and she also can’t tell if that is better or worse than being completely, baselessly delusional.

How is she supposed to ward off monsters if she can’t tell the real ones from the fake?

Her grip on the cup tightens and she realizes she has drawn the silence out.

“Sorry about the bandages.” Chan breaks it. “We found a decent amount of them in the palace infirmary but we’re trying to…”

“Conserve them.” Azula finishes. Her mind maybe be more than half gone, but she hasn’t rendered herself stupid. 

“We still have the palace springs if you want me to send one of the girls up to help you.”

“I want to rest.” She replies. 

Chan nods, “I guess that I’ll leave you to it then.” 

She sinks back into her pillow. At least for a few moments longer she can pretend like nothing has changed.

He makes it halfway across the room before something else dawns upon her. “Chan?” He halts. “Ruon called me a thing…?”

“Yeah sorry ab--”

She holds up a hand. “I don’t care about that. I just want to know  _ why _ . What things did you mistake me for?”

“We don’t know what they are, princess. We can never seem to really get a good look at them.” 

“Were they ever human?”

He pauses. “Yeah. We think. Some of them.” 


	4. Dead Weight

Waking is hard. 

She doesn’t like doing it anymore. 

Maybe if she were plagued by morbid nightmares of being chained to the grate and devoured by unseen forces, waking wouldn’t be so dreadful. But her dreams are surprisingly pleasant. Mundane but pleasant; in them, nothing has changed. She is still Azula with a sharp and clear mind. She is still Azula with a crown on her head. 

In some of them she had won the agni kai and ruled over her kingdom with a larger crown adorning her hair. 

And so waking up is a terrible thing.

It is especially grueling when she wakes with her leg throbbing. She supposes that it is a good thing that her leg throbs with such fury. It means that it isn’t a dead limb yet. She also supposes she should be lucky that she isn’t bearing the telltale signs of an infection induced fever. Her leg has already rendered her remotely useless for the time being, the last thing she wants is for a fever to cripple her further.

She looks down at her hands, at her wrists, at her arms. Her arms are still bruised and both of her wrists have raw and scabbed rings around them. She makes a mental note to monitor them for signs of infection. And another to offer Chan a curt thank you for having the foresight to cleanse the wound---even if it was only to prevent having to waste antibiotics on her.

Leg aside, her main concern is her weight. If she was small enough to slip out of her constraints than she is small enough to have grown considerably weaker. 

More fragile. 

What a loathsome predicament.

No one has come to check on her and she is growing increasingly anxious. What if they had been attacked in the night? What if she is the only one left? What if they simply decided to forget about her and move on? Her stomach lurches at the thought. She never struck herself as the type to fear abandonment or isolation, and yet…

The only company she has is an image of her mother shaking her head from the corner of the room. Azula clutches her head, only momentarily before deciding that she has had enough. She sits up and looks about the room. 

She ought not to, but she heaves herself to her feet--her one good one anyhow--and leans against the bed frame. She makes a clumsy one legged hop to her closet and pulls out several bundles of clothing that she had been meaning to get rid of. She tosses them in the middle of the floor before giving the room another once over. She finds a chair in the corner of the room. She hesitates only momentarily before splintering the legs with a blast of fire. She burns away the sharper edges before binding two the first two chair legs together with one of her old robes and the second set. She pries the armrests away from the chair next and binds those as well. With the remaining cloth, she makes a cushion, more for comfort than anything else. 

She sends a silent prayer to the Spirit World that the makeshift crutches will be sturdy enough to support her weight. She takes a breath and gives them a test run. She makes it across the room and back twice before deciding to have a look down the hall. 

The knock of wood against the floor verberates down the halls, reminding her of their apparent vacancy. She has grown to hate the silence. It leaves too much room for her mind to fill it. Punctuated by darkness her journey to the throne room is going to be dreadful. She wants to light some of the hall torches but can’t risk dropping her crutches. 

Azula isn’t sure how she will approach the stairs. 

She has the length of the hallway to figure it out.

By the time she reaches the stairs, the only plan she has is to lay the crutches across her lap and slid down the stairs, like an undignified fool, on her rear. 

She scowls to herself, but has never shied away from what needs to be done in the past. She drops down and carefully slides herself down the stairs. It takes much longer than it truly ought to, but eventually she reaches the ground floor.

She breathes a sigh or relief at the sound of conversation and makes her way towards it. It would seem that these people, this gaggle of survivors has found the council room. Azula wants to be discreet about her entrance but there is nothing inconspicuous about the clunk of her makeshift crutches. 

Every head in the room turns. Of the twenty of them she recognizes only the faces of Chan, Ruon Jian, and Generals Bujing and Shinu. She doesn’t know them well, but they had always held respect for her. 

She hears footsteps behind her. Part of her expects to have a run in with whatever ‘things’ have these people cooped up in  _ her  _ palace. Instead she sees three more familiar faces. First, and most notably, is the wrinkled face of Lo...or maybe it is Li. Either which way, she finds the woman’s presence reassuring.

Only until she recalls that the last time they had conversed involved her banishing one of the two. She swallows. 

Azula doesn’t have names for the other two girls, but she recognizes them as two of her serving girls. Like the generals, she knows little of them, but they had treated and served her well. “Lo?” Azula guesses in way of greeting. 

“Li.” The old woman corrects. She detects a hint of bitterness.

“Is Lo dead?” 

“Yes.”

Azula feels a pang of guilt. She, until her mind frayed, had trusted the twins. Was, perhaps, even fond of them. She assumes that the guilt was a little more than just a pang. It might have been something notable because Li continues.

“We never left the palace, Princess. We hid away in the serving quarters--you never venture there--and waited for your…” she pauses, “for your mood to get better.” 

“Then what happened to her?” 

“At the moment when Sozin’s comet reached zenith, there was a great sound. A horrible one. We thought that it was the sounds of war finally reaching our soil. We decided to find the source of the sound…”

“And.” 

“We found it, princess.” She replies sadly. 

“What did you find?” 

Li presses her thin lips together. “Something beyond what I can describe. It is more like a feeling than a physical being.” 

Azula crinkles her brows. 

“It does things.” Ruon Jian speaks up. “To mind.” 

Azula swallows, “Does that mean…?”

Li cuts her off, “no, you aren’t infected.”

“Possessed.” Chan corrects. 

“Call it what you will,” Li shrugs, “the point is, your mind broke of its own volition.”

“How can you tell?” Azula asks, barely above a whisper. 

“Madness comes in many forms. You weren’t right that day, but you weren’t feral and animalistically violent like the infected.” 

Azula would beg to differ, but she isn’t fool enough to say as much. 

“Forgive our impoliteness.” Shinu cuts in. “Have a seat, you need it more than I.” The man stands and Azula slips into the chair. 

  
  


Bujing rolls his eyes, “always the gentleman even when society and its expectations are dwindling.” He slams his fists on the table. “You know what I think?”

“What do you think, Bujing?” Chan asks.

“I think that its a bad idea to have her around. You should have seen her on the days before the comet. She wasn’t possessed. No, sir, she was way ahead of them. Beat ‘em to it.” 

Azula’s lip twitches into a scowl, only for a flicker before she wills herself back into a composed state. She supposes that the lapse in stability is still working its way out of her. 

“She’s already crazed without their help. Look at her…”

“Have you ever been chained to a grate for nearly a week. Dehydrated, starving, making a mess of yourself--if you understand my less pleasant implications?” She pauses. “I can provide the experience if you’d like. We can see how long your mind can stay healthy.” She pauses once more. “Though you’ll have the comfort of knowing that someone will be coming back for you. It’s much more maddening to think that you’ve been forgotten.” 

Bujing swallows. She has to admire his persistence and honestly, “you were breaking before then.” 

She shrugs. “I assure you, I am fine now.” Now if only she can assure herself. 

“What are you getting at?” Shinu asks. 

“I’m just wondering why are we keeping her around.” Bujing replies. “When she can snap at any moment. She’s a danger to us all.” 

Azula might have been happy to hear that she is intimidating even with a broken leg was he not discussing kicking her out of her own home.That sort of audacity will have to be snuffed. 

“She will be when she heals, anyways.” He clarifies. “Right now she is just dead weight and a waste of resources.”

Azula gives an indignant sniff. “Clearly I can craft my own resources.”

“Then you’ll have no problem out there.”

Azula’s stomach heaves again. “Have you forgotten whose home you are in?”

“Have you forgotten that the world has ended. Your title is null, Azula.” Bujing smirks. 

“We’re not kicking her out of the group, Bujing.” Chan says.

“I have given you a few reasons to be rid of her. And I’ll give you another for good measure; she isn’t just a waste of resources but she’s useless. She can’t fight them off and she can’t go out on supply runs. If we have to make a hasty retreat she will only slow us down. Dead weight.” He finishes. “Tell me why she should stay?”

Chan is quiet. 

“She’s clever.” One of the serving girls speaks up. “We have a lot of fighters and scavengers here and we have a doctor. But our strategy so far has been...uh…”

“Balls to the walls.” Chan finishes. 

The serving girl nods. “We go in with no plan at all, make it up as we go, and get lucky. We aren’t going to be lucky every time.” 

“And when I do heal…” Azula looks from face to face. “It will be worth your while to have me around.” She holds out a palm full of fire. Should they try to evict her she has already made up her mind to torch the palace in her wake. She doesn’t wait for the discussion to conclude. She doesn’t need to, she already knows the outcome. “I will be in my room.” She preps her crutches and begins to stand. 

“Have dinner with us.” Shinu offers. “It it’s no royal banquet, but it’s something.”

“I suppose that dinner is a good time to begin discussing a plan. You seem to have this place well fortified. You can start by telling me what you have already accomplished and what we are facing.” She looks to Li. “Tell me about the day of the comet.” 


	5. A Plague Of Souls

_ Li walks alongside Lo, the halls are painfully quiet, any conversation is held in hushed tones. “Good luck.” One of the younger serving girls whispers as they pass. “She’s in a mood.” Adds another. Li isn’t particularly worried; taking care of the girl since before the crown could fit on her head, she has seen the princess in all sorts of moods.She is abundantly aware that the princess can be difficult, she is long past being intimidated by it.  _

_ They enter the throne room. “Good evening, princess.” They greet. The princess looks anything but cheerful. In fact the princess looks bleak-eyed and exhausted and yet there is a fierce glimmer in her eyes, a warning glimmer. When it is pleasantly clear that she will not be returning their greeting, Li opts to get straight to the point. “Azula, we heard what happened. Why have you banished all your servants?” _

_ “All your Dai Li agents…” Lo continues.  _

_ “And the imperial firebenders.” Li finishes.  _

_ “None of them could be trusted. Sooner or later, they all would have betrayed me. Just like Mai and Ty Lee did.” Azula replies. Her voice holds sharp overtones of anger and more subtle undertones of hurt and anxiety.  _

_ In unison with her sister, Li speaks, “Azula, we are concerned for you and your well-being.” Truly, Li sympathizes with the girl having seen just how much pressure she places upon herself. How much more pressure that her father adds. _

_ The princess only lashes out further. “My father asked you to come here and talk to me, didn't he‌? He thinks I can't handle the responsibility of being Fire Lord. But I will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history.”  _

_ She is much more temperamental than Li is used to. Really they ought to tread carefully, but Lo speaks first. “I'm sure you will. But considering everything that has happened today…” _

_ Li cringes to herself, though, maybe the princess would find it more patronizing if they tried to sugarcoat things so Li continues, “perhaps it's best if you postponed your coronation.” _

_ Rage flares to life in Azula’s intense gold eyes. They have made a mistake. “What?! Which one of you just said that?” _

_ Li exchanges a glance with her sister as Azula continues speaking, “what a shame. There's only one way to resolve this. You two must duel each other. I order you to fight an Agni Kai!” _

_ Rather flabbergasted Li leaves Lo to speak first. “But…” _

_ Li joins the conversation. “We're not firebenders.” _

_ “Alright, fine.” The princess seems to reluctantly accept this reminder. Pointing at Li, she declares, “Lo, you're banished.” And then to Lo, “Li, you can stay.” The girl walks away before they can question her a second time.  _

_ “I think it would be best if we both took our leave.” Li says. _

_ “Or we can make our way into one of the hidden passageways and wait for her state to pass.” Lo suggests.  _

_ Li considers. Venturing beyond the palace walls with the war reaching its climax posed a ri.sk. But was the risk greater than the one the princess herself posed should she discover them? “Her mind is elsewhere.” Lo continues. “She won’t search us out.”  _

_ Li nods, “let’s stop at the kitchen along the way.”  _

_ The duo wanders down a long flight of stairs that make several twists and turns before opening into a hallway that they follow for a length of time. They make themselves comfortable in rather small, secret underground annex. But it is spacious enough to be comfortably livable, at least for a few days while the comet unfolds. Fixed on the ceiling, there is a narrow, horizontal window that lets light in and offers a view, albeit a limited one, of the outside world.  _

_ The few days leading up to the comet pass remotely uneventfully. The most excitement they receive is watching cataipede crawl up the wall and begin the first stages of chrysalis. The day after provides a shift in the atmosphere.  _

_ Li thinks, at first, that it is the effect of the midday sky warming into the orange and red hues of a sunset. “It is beginning.” Lo notes.  _

_ In which case, with the princess presumably attending her coronation, it is safe to emerge from hiding. Li vocalizes as much before standing up and stretching very stiff limbs. If the palace was sushed before, it is gravely quiet now. With the servants and much of the palace staff gone, the place is oppressively eerie. Their footsteps echo down the expansive hallway. A hallway that seems almost elongated by the change in atmosphere.  _

_ “How long do you think her coronation will last?” Lo asks.  _

_ “Long enough for us to restock our food supply and get some fresh air.” Li replies. The pair scavenge the kitchen before making their way into the outside world. The sun may be blotted out by clouds (both natural and born of war machines and comet dust) but the comet itself provides plenty of light as begins to make its way across the horizon.  _

_ The sky is tinged red, its reflection in the royal garden’s pond gives the waters an uncanny, coppery, resemblance to a pool of blood. She and Lo wander to the nearest bench and unwrap simple sandwiches; a meal for their comet viewing.  _

_ Distantly, they can hear the sounds of war balloons taking off and as the comet progresses comes the sound of a battle. The roar of fire slapping against fire, of explosions, the sounds of an agni kai. It is almost too close for comfort and keeps Li from fully enjoying her sandwich.  _

_ She has her meal finished and is discussing their next move with Lo when comes an astoundingly bright bolt of lightning. She can imagine that it could be seen well and clear over the rim of the volcano. It is accented by terribly loud rumble of thunder.  _

_ Thunder rocks the ground before all goes silent.  _

_ Disturbingly so.  _

_ Every now and again the sound of flames roar in the distant but they become less and less frequent as the comet reaches zenith. And then it does, it reaches its highest point and bursts into a brighter flare.  _

_ A flare and then burst.  _

_ Mayhaps it is that her sight isn’t what it used to be, but she swears that something--just a small chunk--has broken away from the comet.  _

_ Li looks to Lo who gives a shrug.  _

_ “We need to be gone when the princess comes home, maybe we should have a look.” Lo suggests.  _

_ “These old bones, walking that far?” Li asks. _

_ Her sister laughs, “no one is around we have our pick of any of the tanks.” _

_ Li returns the wheezing cackle. “Like in the good ol’ days.”  _

_ Interesting, in retrospect, to know that they were seeking out a taste of the past in something that would only distance them much further from it.  _

_ The city passes in a blur, several times, Lo almost sends them careening into a building. By the fifth time Li grumbles, “let me drive you old moth-bat!”  _

_ “Not a chance!” Lo clings to the wheel. “I haven’t done this in years!” Her laughter is of the howling variety and Li grins am almost toothless grin. She turns her head and spies the coronation square. She gives her own hooting laugh at the prospect of defying the princess in such close proximity. It is exhilarating, she will save feeling guilty for a later time. _

_ A thin trail of dark smoke acts as a beacon, guiding them to where the space rock had collided. Lo rolls the tank to a stop near the rim of Capital City’s volcano. Li grimances, “do you think your old legs can carry you all the way up there?” _

_ “It don’t matter.” Lo replies. “I’m only getting older, if I’m gonna go out, I might as well make it fun.”  _

_ Li frowns. “You don’t have to rush to your grave.” _

_ “Eh, who said this is gonna kill me.” She calls down, for the old coon has already scrambled herself halfway up the craggy rim.  _

_ “You let me know what’s up there.  _ My  _ old legs won’t carry me that far.” She chuckles to herself. Of course her sister still has her agility. She herself would rather stay where things are safe. She listened to the sound of Lo shuffling around. _

_ “Well I don’t know what this is.” Lo calls at last.  _

_ “What does it look like?” _

_ Lo’s face peeks over the edge. “I can’t say. Every time I think that I’ve found the words for it, it changes.”  _

_ “Has the princess driven you mad too?” Li asks. She doesn’t get an answer. “Lo?” The lengthy pause leaves her jittery. “Lo?” She calls again. She shudders, there is an unpleasant rippling in her soul.  _

_ An incomprehensible blackness that seems to wedge itself into the interweaved souls of she and her sister. “Lo!?” She calls out a third time, louder, more desperate.  _

_ Something is wrong, she can feel it in her core and yet she can’t say why it is wrong.  _

_ It is an alteration. Perhaps not directly to her soul. But inadvertently as some type of spiritual poison works into Lo’s soul. _

_ Her sister comes back into view, providing only a fleeting moment of relief before Li notices her shambling gait. She is moving slower and her descent from the rim is more uncanny than the bloody reflection on the garden pond.  _

_ She forces a smile and tries to ignore the feeling of terror. “Lo, I told you that you shouldn’t have made that climb. Now you’ve gone and hurt yourself.” Li scolds. With any luck Azula’s coronation will have left her in a better, more generous mood. And perhaps she will allow for Lo to receive adequate care. “Let’s get you to the place.” She adds when Lo doesn’t respond. _

_ Her sister’s gaze never leaves the floor and her hands seem to stiffly twitch every few minutes. And as they walk back to the tank she takes pause every now and again as her whole body shudders.  _

_ It isn’t normal.  _

_ Not even slightly.  _

_ But Li wants to believe that her sister is fine.  _

_ “How about you tell me what you found up there?” _

_ She is met only with raspy breathing.  _

**.oOo.**

_ It is a miracle that Zuko is the one to greet her and with a grand and glorious tale of victory. Li wishes that she can share in his joy. Instead she forces Lo forward. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Fire Lord Zuko. But you need to allow her to see the royal physicians.”  _

_ Zuko gives a sympathetic nod. “What happened?” _

_ “We saw something break off of the comet. Lo and I wanted to see what it was.” _

_ Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. “What is with you old people and doing crazy things? I think the comet has driven everyone nuts!” _

_ “You might be right there, Fire Lord.” But exactly what kind of madness has befallen Lo.  _

_ Zuko escorts the twins to the infirmary. Lo is surprisingly strong as she resists Zuko’s attempts to lay her down. It is a silent protest, but the old woman refuses to get in bed. Zuko seems to grimace. “Maybe I should have her taken to the institution with Azula…”  _

_ In need of a distraction she inquires, “what has become of the girl.”  _

_ “She started screaming. Just screaming. And breathing fire…” Zuko trails off. “She wasn’t...she wasn’t  _ her _.”  _

_ “Yes.” Li nods. “She was unusually cross with Lo and I.”  _

_ Lo gives another full body tremor and collapses onto the bed.  _

_ Her skin doesn’t begin to liquify for another day. But when it does, it is absolutely putrid.  _

_ Her eyes go red first. Completely red as each and every blood vessel seems to rupture. Li watches it happen; first her right eye and then the left. Li tries not to stare for too long lest she be forced to accept that there is something silvery-white, fog-like, slithering in the pits of red.  _

_ Li can’t help but be reminded of the pond.  _

_ She begins to think of it as an omen.  _

_ An omen she had failed to recognize.  _

_ “Lo, are you still in there?” Li asks on the second day.  _

_ Whatever it is that festers within Lo’s soul, only seems to grow. Li feels it in her own soul and wonders if she will fall to the madness too. _

_ Lo’s lips move and Li regrets having coaxed it. That same silver-white smoke seems to ebb with in her mouth. But it isn’t like any natural mist, it doesn’t waft up. It doesn’t leave Lo’s mouth at all. It simply clings to the corners of her mouth as though waiting.  _

_ The third day is when the first glob of flesh slouches down Lo’s cheek. It peels from the corner of Lo’s right eye.  _

_ Li darts up faster than she thought her aged body ever could. “Fire Lord Zuko!” She calls. But what is he going to do? He is no doctor. Perhaps it is only the instinct of years of being an advisor that compels her to inform him of what is going on before sending for a doctor. Or maybe it is that she is used to Azula’s wit and quick thinking; the girl may not possess a friendly demeanor, but she had always granted them access to quality healthcare.  _

_ Whatever the reason, she is at Zuko’s side. And the Fire Lord is on his feet in seconds.  _

_ “Sit down, Fire Lord. If the woman is sick, you need to keep far from her.” A guard declares. “In fact, have this one quarintined.”  _

_ Zuko bites his cheek, his eyes go downcast. “She’s…” _

_ “Fire Lord.” The man continues. “If this is the same thing that has emerged near the west rim…” He trails off. “There is already talk of getting you evacuated.”  _

_ “Evacuated?” Zuko snaps. “What the hell is going on here?” _

_ She can see it on him, the stress weeps off of him like Lo’s decaying skin. He probably hasn’t even finished the paperwork that would have his sister institutionalized, much less has he had the time to get used to how the crown feels on his head.  _

_ “I’m in the middle of planning a victory and coronation ceremony. I still have to unchain…”  _

_ “Those things can wait.” Says a second guard.  _

_ “My sister…” _

_ “We will take care of that.” Says the first guard. He eyes Li. “Will someone take this old moth-bat into quarantine. Agnidammit!” _

_ “Be careful with her!” Zuko shouts as a pair of particularly uncaring hands grab her by her frail elbows.  _

_ She scowls at the rudeness of the soldiers, she isn’t one to pull rank, but, spirits, she would think that they’d handle a royal advisor--especially one so aged as she--with a little more attentiveness.  _

_ “We’ll give you a few days. If your eyes don’t go red we’ll let you out.” Says the man as he closes the door. It’s thick metal seals her away from the answers that she years for. It only opens once more for a different guard to hand her at least four days worth of food and drink. _

_ She doesn’t see another human being for those four days.  _

_ It gives her time to think.  _

_ Think and agonize over what she doesn’t know and never will.  _

_ No she never does find out what Lo had seen; what caused her body to jerk and shudder. Li is glad that her bones creak and groan too much for her to have seen it for herself. But only partially so. The other part of her knows that she should have been there.  _

_ They were born together.  _

_ They were supposed to die together. _

_ If only they would have stayed in hiding.  _

_ If only they had feared Azula’s wrath more.  _

_ Day five rolls around--day two of her quarantine--and she knows that Lo is dead. In the same why she has felt the unintelligible vileness, she feels that the other half of her soul has been snuffed out. _

_ She stops eating on day five.  _

_ She is disturbed to realize that she feels hollow and free in equal measure; the death of her twin frees her soul and crushes it all at once.  _

_ On day six, a guard--Shinu, as she comes to know him--comes to free her, which is more kindness than was, apparently, extended to the princess.  _

_ She steps out of quarantine and back into the world.  _

_ By then, most of it is gone. _


	6. One Step Ahead

Azula sits rigid as she listens to Li recount her story. “So this...whatever it is, came from the comet?” 

“That’s the leading theory.” Shinu replies. 

A sickness of soul that decays the body, Azula cringes. How unsettling. Clearly it isn’t spread through the air, otherwise she would probably be melting away. She thinks for a moment that she could be sick and simply not displaying it yet. But, if Li’s story has any credibility, the disease--possession, whatever it is--seems to act fast. If she were sick, her skin would be peeling already.

“How does it spread?” She asks. 

“The best way to get infected is to go out there and face off with one of the rotters. But if you’re feeling adventurous, you can go directly to the source.” Bujing says. “We had a few brazen dumbfucks try to destroy the thing. Thought that if they got rid of the space rock, it would get rid of the madness.” 

Azula nods, “and exactly how do the...rotters spread this? A bite?” 

Her former serving girl shakes her head. “It’s worse than that. You don’t even see it coming.”

“You can feel it.” Chan puts in. “But by then it’s too late. If you’re lucky, you can hear it coming.” 

“If you feel it, then someone is going to die, you just have to hope that it’s not you.” Ruon adds. 

“They don’t even have to touch you.” Shinu replies. “Don’t even have to get particularly close.” 

Azula finishes her lackluster meal, she doesn’t complain because her appetite has been diminishing with every revelation. How can she fight something that no one seems to fully understand? Something that she has yet to witness for herself? She grows painfully aware that her ignorance and her broken leg make her the weakest link in the group. She is disposable.  
Sacrificable. 

“Is it reasonable to assume that this is a worldwide plight?” 

“It could have spread, yes.” Li replies. “But one of the first things they did was evacuate your brother, the Avatar, and friends to the Earth Kingdoms.”

“Have you tried to make it to the Earth Kingdoms?” 

“We can barely manage a supply run.” Chan confesses. 

Azula ponders it, the more thought she puts in the less appealing the Earth Kingdom sounds. With mass panic and fleeing, it would have been embarrassingly easy for one of the infected to board a ship and carry the plague over. “that’s probably a good thing.” This earns her a scoff from Bujing. “The Earth Kingdoms are of no use. We need to go to the Tribes.”

“The Tribes?” Bujing asks. 

She tosses the idea around in her head, speaking her musings aloud, “the cold could freeze a rotter where it stands. A frozen host is a useless host.” She pauses. That sounds about right. “At the very least, the snow can slow them down. It’s hard for a healthy individual to trudge through that much snow…” 

Little does the idea of living the rest of her life out in a frigid world--cut significantly off from her firebending--please her. But living her life as a plague-riddled shell is less enticing. “Not much can survive in the poles, maybe the sickness will die too.”

There is a soft murmur about the room.

“That’s an option to consider.” Shinu replies. “A good one.” 

Azula holds her head high, she must make herself worth keeping. “I know the quickest ways from there to the port. Give me some time and I will have a plan. We will make it to the tribes.”

“Give us any plan that you’d like, but we’d have to leave you behind.” Bujing gestures to her leg. “We need speed.” 

“You will receive the plan and directions only if I can accompany you all.” She holds her ground. 

“What good is a faster route if you’ll be there to slow us down?” 

Azula grits her teeth. The audacity of the man! But she knows that it is true, at least to some degree, she can’t say that she wouldn’t elect to leave him behind if he acquired a crippling injury. “I’m not very heavy, I’m sure that carrying me wouldn’t…”

Bujing laughs. “You’re no princess anymore, you’re worth just about as much as the rest of us in this world. Your palanquin bearers are dead and no one is going to carry you for them.” 

Her fingers tighten around the edge of the arm rest. 

“Then we will just have to hold the palace until she recovers.” Li declares. The woman slowly comes to stand next to her and curls gnarled and bony fingers over Azula’s shoulder. 

“What value does she have to you?” Bujing grumbles. 

“I’ve watched over her since she was a babe. It was my job, let an old woman maintain one thing from her old life.” 

.oOo.

Azula leans her makeshift crutches against the bedposts and rests her head against the pillows. She strokes them with careful fingers. She is going to miss them among other things. Things like baths and changes of clothes. 

All the same she is eager to heal and to make for one of the Water Tribes. She can’t imagine that the palace will remain unbreeched forever and she doesn’t want to be around when their gates topple. 

She sighs to herself and stares blankly at the ceiling.   
To think that the world had lost its sanity alongside her.   
They don’t need to know just how severely she has snapped; they don’t need another reason to want to cast her out. 

She laughs bitterly to herself. They don’t know just how damaged she is. She wears a bracelet of raw scabs that still throb and twitch every now and again. Her throat is just as raw and her head...she can sense that there is a knot there. How foolish she was to have bashed her own head against the ground; really they ought to leave her behind.   
She has thought of sieges before, of being caged with a group of strangers and familiar faces. Every siege needs one madman, one person who snaps and vanquishes the whole group. For all of the scenarios she thought up, she never conjured one wherein she was the madman. 

She winces at a particularly sharp pang from her wrist. 

Chan doesn’t knock, he just enters. “You doing okay?”

“Just wonderful.” She mutters.

He looks her over with what can only be pity. “I thought that you should know that the rest of the group has made a decision.”

“And?”

“Bujing is the only one who really wants you gone. He’s been outvoted.” 

So she’ll get to survive for just a little longer. But for what? The more she lets her mind wander the more her survival instinct wanes. Even if the world hadn’t gone to shit, she had still been reduced to a howling, crazed animal, chained to a grate. “Did he. Did Zuzu even try to get me? Or were those just empty words?”

Chan shrugs, “I don’t think so, his advisers evacuated him almost right away after his conversation with Li.”

“But he had time to put up a gate and lock it?”

Chan shakes his head. “That was my dad. The gate was put up to make it that much harder for them to get to the capital square and the palace.” Chan explains. “You just so happened to be within the walls.” He pauses. “I don’t think that anyone realized you were there.” 

“Clearly.” She replies. In the chaos she had been forgotten, that is all that she needs to know as far as her value goes. Had she been important, she could be safe with Zuzu and his merry band of peasants.   
Instead she is trapped within a broken palace in a lawless land and further confined within a broken body. “Bujing is right, you should go…”

“We aren’t going to abandon you, princess.” Li appears in the doorway.

“Don’t worry, I’m used to it.” Azula replies plainly with a nonchalant hand wave that doesn’t match the pout on her face. 

Li lowers herself onto the bed and takes Azula’s hand. The woman’s hand is cold and wrinkled, almost uncomfortable. It shakes slightly. “You may have lost everything first, but the rest of this nation wasn’t too far behind.” 

She always was one step ahead of everyone.


	7. The Weakest Link

Her dream wasn’t polite but her awakening is much ruder. So abrupt that she can’t grasp onto the remaining visages of her night terror. It comes in the form of a thundering crash that echos down hallways that have grown so hauntingly silent. 

Somehow she has an inkling that the day horrors waiting for her will be boundlessly worse than those conjured up by her beaten psyche. 

“Fuck!” She hears someone scream, she thinks that it is Chan. 

“I thought that you said we had it secured!” This she knows is Bujing. 

The whole of her tenses as the weight of what he had just shouted sinks in. She stares down at her useless leg and an icy feeling ebbs into her core. She can’t fight and she certainly can’t run. Hiding is always an option, but never a good one. 

There comes a great roaring and crackling sound. Several bursts of it. 

Firebending. 

A lot of it. 

A dreadful sign. 

How long will it be before the breech reaches her room? She dreads what will happen when it does. A shrill scream coaxes her into action. Gathering her makeshift crutches she makes her way out of bed, noting somewhat miserably that she probably won’t be sleeping on it again if they can’t hold their ground. 

She isn’t quite sure what she thinks she is doing, and she resents that she still doesn’t have a clear picture as to what she is up against. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Azula’s stomach sinks as the hushed chatter increases its volume. With them, the throne room is somehow lonelier. There is an uncanny chill in the room now that it lacks the warm ambiance of the firelord’s flame. Even the ghostly blue of her fire had been more inviting than this eerie gloom. She can only faintly smell the last visages of the flames that once blazed.

She spares the throne itself a look; only a week or so prior she had been sitting there. Things had been...no, not normal. Far from. She lowers her gaze only to be met with something more disparaging. At the foot of the throne, the Fire Lord’s crown rests. Its glint and gleam is replaced by a layer of dust.

Absurdly enough, she finds herself making her way to it, the sound of her crutches bouncing off of the walls and between the pillars. She carefully stoops to pick it up and dust it off. Her reflection in its gold is beaten and rugged, her cheeks are hollow and her eyes tired. She looks just about as healthy as the rest of her sorry gaggle of survivors. 

The whispers make themselves apparent again so Azula quickly tucks the crown into her pocket and resumes her venture into the entrance hall. The sounds of the fight are growing fainter as the voices rasp louder. There is an awful sense of dread rising in Azula’s belly. She hastens her stride, cursing the shadows. Shadows that probably shouldn’t be there at all now that the fire has died. The whispers seem to double. 

_ If you’re lucky you can hear it coming… _

Her stomach sinks further at the sound of a snap.

There is another crunch as she hits the floor. She can’t help but cry out. Not that it matters, they already know where she is. She could strip off every scrap of clothing on her body and would be less exposed than she is now. 

Trembling with pain, she brings her hand to her nose, finding it as broken as her leg. Bile rises in her throat and she fights the urge to vomit right there as blood leakes between her fingers. There is a lot of it, her nose is gushing. 

The voices seem to close in and she finds herself praying that her mind is simply unraveling again. She wishes for her own insanity. She has to make it to the entry hall…

She has to make it to a place where she can at least have an illusion of safety. But her crutch is unsalvageable and the remaining one simply won’t cut it.

Azula forces herself into a sitting position and stares glumly at her leg, the fall certainly hadn’t done it any favors. She swallows and balls her fists. She refuses to feel as helpless as she had when bound to the grate.

This is different, she can still move, she can still get away. 

Feeling completely pathetic, she drags herself across the floor, cursing the impressive expanse of the throne room. She makes it halfway when the first figure emerges. She lets out an anguished and frustrated cry before lunching a burst of fire at it.

The figure bends back; the sense of relief moves her to tears. 

“Geeze, you couldn’t just wait for us to come get you?” Chan asks. He bends down and cups her cheek. “What happened?” 

She points to her halved crutch and he nods his acknowledgement. 

“And you’re still fighting…” He mutters. “You’re something else. I’m sure that Bujing won’t be able to say that your a burden now that…” his smile is so soft that she doesn’t register it right away. 

Not until his body seizes and his eyes begin to bleed. She scrambles away from him as quickly as her leg will allow. His body twitches, pops, and cracks. 

She isn’t sure what she had expected, no one has ever come to save her in the past and those who have tried had never made it very far. She is on her own. She is always on her own. At least she has a sense of familiarity in that.

She takes a deep breath and uses the closest pillar to stand. With her one good leg and her arms she propells herself with a burst of fire. It is no easy feat with her body in such a wretched strength. Having no food in her belly since the night prior leaves the task that much more dizzying; she hasn’t the energy for this scale of bending. 

She hasn’t any other options. 

Azula collapses as soon as she makes it to the entry room. 

“Where’s Chan?” Ruon shouts. “We sent him to get you.” 

Azula swallows. “It...they? Got him.” Her voice is hoarse. “He’s been claimed.”

“See what happens!?” Bujing shouts. “It’s only been a few days and someone has already died for her.” 

She snarls, “I could have saved myself. I  _ did  _ save myself.” 

“And you left Chan to die.”

“I couldn’t do anything for--” 

“You couldn’t do anything.” He repeats, lifting her from the ground. “Chan saved the lot of us and now he’s gone. And for what? A cripple. The weakest link.” 

Azula cringes. The weakest link…

Monster, evil, insane, lunatic, liar, bitch. She has been called a lot of things but never weak. 

“Put her down Bujing!” It is the serving girl. 

Instead he gives her a rather firm shake. “Oh, I’ll put her down.” He scowls. “I’ll do it the same way I did my komodo rhino when it took an ice spike to the belly.” 

Decidedly, Azula has had enough of this. Leg be damned, she brings boiling heat to her palms. Bujing drops her with a hollar. She hisses in pain of her own as she collides with the floor. Bujing lifts his foot and she braces herself for him to bring it down on her leg. Instead the man lets out another cry as a ball of fire rams into his side. 

“We fight those things not people.” Ruon says simply. “And right now we need to focus on fighting them.” 

“How can we fight something that has no form of its own?” Shinu asks.

Azula closes her eyes and tries to slow her heavy breathing. She feels terribly faint, the sounds of conversation and bickering are growing distant. She clenches her fist, digging her nails into her palm. She has to stay awake. 

“Azula.” The shake she receives is much gentler, it rouses her from her oncoming daze. “We have to stop the bleeding…” Ruon’s voice is muddled under the whispers. 

She holds her hand up. “No time.” 

His mouth opens in protest, but he makes it no further. He changes directions, “we need to move!” 

She thinks that even he is aware that they are already too late. 

“She led them right to us!” Bujing accuses. 

“Fool!” Li snaps. “They were already on their way.” 

“And you wasted our time with…” the serving girl starts. It is apparent that she has detected the same shift that Azula has. 

The whispers fall abruptly silent. And what fills their place is much worse. Intangibly so. Whatever it is, it is crushing. A feeling so deeply evil that she can now say for sure that she is no monster. 

_ If you feel it, someone is going to die, you just have to hope that it’s not you. _

She finds that her breathing is growing unsteady again. 

Fight or flight leaves in search of some third option. One that her mind cannot find. There is only one whisper now. A single voice that chants something at a pitch she has never heard, in a language that might be spoken in reverse. 

It is going to claim another, she looks around the room trying to assess just who it will go for. 

And then it fades. 

The oppressive foreboding fades.

No. It doesn’t fade. It transitions. 

Transitions into a sense of complete despair.

A sense of knowing that all is lost. 

But who will be lost? She hopes that it isn’t Li. 

They all step back in uniform. Has it claimed all of them? Azula swallows, she is going to watch them all be overcome. The chant grows louder, something crawls beneath her flesh. An agitating prickle. They all retreat further, faces contorted in terror and she knows…

_ If you feel it, someone is going to die, you just have to hope that it’s not you. _


	8. Not That One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter because I don't like only being able to upload only once a week. Next one should be more standard in length.

It doesn’t hurt, not at first. No, it is all calm, all blissful The whispers soften, they are almost soothing. Azula falls back, her head connects with the floor but the contact doesn’t register. She gives a the ceiling a glassy-eyed gaze before her body spasms. 

Now it hurts. 

It hurts horrifically. 

She opens her mouth to cry out in pain, but nothing comes out. Not even a wheeze or a wince. 

The whispers fill her mind, crowding and cramming it. The whispers swell and swell, they bekon her to do things, things she is certain that she doesn’t want to do but longs to do. The chatter raises in pitch, higher and higher until it is a shrill ringing in her ears. She covers them, digging her nails into her skin. 

A dull pressure builds inside of her head, growing with the ringing until she feels as though her head may implode. 

_ “What, no lightning today? Afraid I’ll redirect it.” _

Azula grits her teeth.

_ “I love Zuko more than I fear you.”  _

_ “You’re the prettiest, smartest, most perfect girl in the world.” _

_ “I’ve decided to lead the fleet of airships to Ba Sing Se alone. You will remain here in the Fire Nation.” _

It picks through her memories, through her mind. Through her secrets and her fears, wrapping gentle spectral fingers around them. Those fingers close and nothing remains. Nothing but a blank space. 

Holes.

She doesn’t know what she has lost, she just knows that she wants it back. 

_ Fear.  _

_ Only fear and intense fear.  _

_ No, helplessness too.  _

_ The filth that clings to her, the horrid smell. The gnawing emptiness in her belly and the dry cracks in her throat. _

The sensations overwhelm her just as powerfully as they had when she was living them. Her hands twitch as she jerks against chains that are no longer there. 

And then the tendrils lick them away. She considers for a moment that they are forces of mercy. 

_ TyLee wraps her arms around Azula’s middle, “it’s so good to see you again!” She remembers the warmth. That rare moment of affection. _

They take this too.

Pleasant or unkind, the phantom fingers don’t differentiate between the two. She gets the impression they are just making space. 

She cries out. Is it supposed to take this long? With Chan it seemed to happen in an instant. But then, maybe he was bombarded by these sorts of visions as he was attacking her. Is she attacking someone? Is she standing on a broken leg and stumbling forward?

Her body seems to burn from within.

_ The air is warm and fragrant with seasalt and hibiscus. A breeze rustles her hair. She feels like there is much better use for her time but father has sent them on a vacation so she will make the most of it. Zuzu scowls next to her.  _

_ They are sitting around a fire… _

No. Not that one. 

The tendrils snake around it but she clasps her own energy around it first. She is almost certain that, that is one of her only pleasant memories. The tendrils retract and reach for another. 

_ “What’s wrong with that child.”  _

Not that one either. 

Not that one, not any of them. 

She clutches her head, she can’t tell if the voices are theirs or a product of her own mind. A face looms over hers. “Mother?” The pressure builds as she tries to get a handle on what is what. But her mind is splintering. Fracturing to the point that she doesn’t recognize her own shriek of agony. Doesn’t quite register that her pain is her own. 


	9. A Distortion & A Shroud

Ruon Jian flinches. The noise tearing from the princess’ throat is absolutely unholy. It is layered and unnatural. A cacophony of suffering and all that is wrong in the world. Overlapping her normal, rather soft and soothing voice is something much lower. There is another something that is more like a wail and beneath that, something perhaps mechanical. 

Her nose and ears bleed profusely, and Ruon slinks further away. The infection...it could be in her blood. Can it transfer that way? Azula twitches and seizes. 

“I told you all, didn’t I!” Bujing bellows. “We shoulda killed her. She’s gonna be one helluva vessle with that blue fucking fire.” 

“Her leg…” Xuia points out. 

“Those things can’t feel pain, it’ll walk.” Bujing snarls. 

With a few more gurgling noises and gasping breaths, the princess goes rigid, her body seeming to lock with her back arched awkwardly and her fingers stuck halfway between a fist and being outstretched. Ruon Jian can’t gauge for exactly how long she held that impossible contortion. She seemed to have been suspended for ages and then her body drops with a considerable thud. 

As soon as her head hits the floor, she begins to weep. Ruon Jian shudders, her cries are more disturbing than those screams. He thinks it is due largely in part to how human and pained her natural voice sounds beneath the excess vocal layers. The others step back even further, but he draws nearer. 

“They’ve got him too…” Shinu trails off. 

Do they? He wonders. Is that what it is? Is his mind his own or are they compelling him to come closer? To join them. An image flickers in his mind. A morbid grotesque thing; his body merging and fusing into Azula’s. He casts it aside as abruptly as he can manage. 

He reaches a hand out to her, feeling the tension in her body slacken under his touch. Her body meets the floor. It looks so incredibly fragile and broken. She, though free from that disturbing living-flesh rigor mortis, goes completely still. 

“Azula?” He tries.

He shouldn’t.

He should back away with the rest of them. If he had any sense at all, he would. 

She turns her head and her lips part ever so slightly. For a moment, he thinks that she is dead. But then she slowly sits up, her hair obscuring her face. At last, self preservation kicks in and he backs away.

“My head hurts.” She mumbles. She brings her fingers to her nose and her expression seems to twist into something of pain and confusion. She looks directly at him. “You fool, don’t just stand there…” Her words are normal for her but her voice is uncanny and still holds traces of the layers. She is panting lightly. He wonders if she is even aware of the distortion in her voice. 

**.oOo.**

“I need…” What does she need? Help? A doctor? She won’t find either of those.  _ Reassurance _ , the word comes to her head. She won’t get that either, they are afraid of her. No, beyond that. They are horrified through and through. 

For once it is not her own fault. 

The ringing remains in her ears. “Get me something to drink.” She feels sick. She hasn’t time to fully comprehend this before she hunches over and expels what little food is in her belly. Mostly what comes up is a viscus mix of chunky, clotted blood, and some sort of thick black ooze. 

It takes everything to keep herself awake and upright. She tastes rot and copper on her tongue and her stomach seems to be ripping at itself. She hugs her middle and gives a soft gasp of a cry. She squeezes her eyes shut and a single tear manages to escape. 

“I’ve seen enough.” She knows that the gruff voice belongs to Bujing. “Let’s kill it before it can kill us.”

She opens her mouth to protest, put can only manage another pained hiss, it probably doesn’t help her case. 

“Wait.” She thinks that it is Li. “This isn’t what the infection looks like, not entierly.” 

“Then it’s evolving!” Bujing declares. 

“You don’t have to kill her, Bujing.”

“And you don’t have to cater to her needs anymore, Xuia.”

Her vision blurs as the man draws nearer. “You didn’t think that she was going to last did you?” He’d have probably given her a good kick if not for his fear of making contact with her disease riddled body.

She doesn’t think that contact has anything to do with contraction. 

No, whatever this is. It is a disease of the mind. She supposes that it is bad luck for, whatever they are, that her mind is already sick. 

Such is her parting thought as she flops back to the floor. 

**.oOo.**

Her first moments of awakening almost pleasant; there’s a relief in knowing that she has woken at all. But the moment of jubilation passes as quickly as it had set in, replaced by a sense of wrongness, as though the universe is just off somehow. She looks around her room, everything is as it should be, where it had been last left. The colors are the same, it isn’t inexplicably lighter nor darker. 

But it is not the same. 

Azula can’t place it, but it just isn’t.

She supposes it is more of a feeling than any real, tangible physical sensation. Something is wrong not just in her room, but in the world. She wishes that she could shake this feeling away and as soon as she does she longs to have it back, for that unnerved feeling is nothing in comparison to the sheer and utter panic that follows its departure.

She is alone again. 

Alone and bound. 

In a final moment of disbelief, she gives the leather strap a tug. 

Azula jerks again with more force before letting an absolutely animalistic scream tear from her throat. Distantly, she notes that this isn’t the kind of behavior she should exhibit; that this is the kind of demeanor that would convince a person to tether her in the first place. 

But she wants out, she wants out now. 

Before she can go hungry again. 

Before she can go thirsty. 

And tired. 

And completely feral. 

Just at the notion of reliving her worst week, she may have already reverted into a feral state. She wishes furiously that the creature--mayhaps, may creatures--would have ripped the entirety of that memory from her. 

“Let me go!” She hollers her voice is raspy and with a harsh shrillness. “You worthless pesents, let me go!” But what if they have already vacated the palace in favor of a more secure place. A trickle of nervous sweat forms on her forehead. “You can’t leave me here!” She shouts to the darkness of the hallway. “You can’t!” 

She throws her head back against the pillow. At least this prison is more comfortable than the merciless ground in the Capital square. At least her position is more bearable. But she isn’t going to last as long here; there is no rain to provide her with drink and the palace is rodent free. 

She watches the sun wayne and she knows that hours have gone by. Hours without a sound or a soul. She wishes that Bujing would have killed her as he had vowed to do. The night deepens and so does her resignation. 

The initial shock and dismay gives way to a creeping numbness. In that numbness, that strange, off-beat feeling works its way back in. She fills the emptiness and quiet with trying to discern exactly what is not quite right about the world.

She doesn’t make much progress at all beyond noting that she is simply, somehow seeing the world through different lenses. But she still feels like Azula. She still feels as though she is in full control. 

Except for that one whisper. 

The one she can hear but only if she really tries to. 

She isn’t worried. 

That kind of thing had taken grip of her mind days prior to the comet. 

Azula turns her head so that her cheek is against the pillow. She forces herself to believe that she is simply going to sleep after the stresses of a normal day. 

**.oOo.**

“She looks normal to me.” Ruon Jian notes. 

“They all do.” Bujing counters. 

“That’s not necessarily true.” Says Shinu.

Ruon Jian looks to Li. The old woman seems to consider. “The incubation process I witnessed with my dear sister was much different.” She confirms. “I do hate to say it, but Bujing could be correct about an evolution.” She pauses. “A strain or possession that takes hold more rapidly.”

Ruon Jian’s stomach lurches. It was already bad enough when the progression was slow. 

“So what do you propose?” Bujing asks. 

“Keep her secure and see if she starts to deteriorate.” Shinu suggests. 

“No.” Ruon speaks without fully forming the the reason for his aversion to this plan. The small gaggle of survivors await further elaboration. “This thing affects the mind before the body, right?” 

Li nods. 

“So we should let her go. We’re not going to get an accurate picture if we chain her up and treat her like she’s already gone…”

“Ridiculous!” Bujing exclaims. 

“Fair.” Li disagrees. “We will let her go free until we have a reason to speculate that she shouldn’t be.” The old woman observes the cross and skeptical expressions she has just drawn. “Pay attention to how she walks…” and then she backtracks. “If she tries walking at all without crutches, that is the first sign something is amiss. If her gait is stiff, then she has been taken. If her body locks and tremors…” She slows her pacing. “I think that you understand what I am talking about. “We’ve all seen it.” 

They mutter among themselves, some in agreement while others protest. “I’ll undo her restraints.” Ruon volunteers. 

“Be careful.” Xuia requests. 

Her eyes are eerily vacant when he gazes into them. “Azula.” He addresses and sets a try of stale food on her nightstand. 

“Are you really here?” She whispers. 

In way of an answer he loosens the leather straps around her wrists and lets her wiggle her hands free as he works on the ones binding her ankles and then the largest one that locks her torso to the bed. 

“I thought that…” Her voice is hoarse. “You didn’t leave me behind?” 

He shakes his head. “We were out all day trying to fix our barriers as much as we can. We’re not going to be able to stay here much longer. I don’t know where we’re going to go.” 

Azula rolls her eyes, giving him a burst of reassurance that she is still the princess he sort of knew. “To the tribes, idiot. Like I told you.” She sits up and Ruon watches her movement closely. It is still slow, maybe some stiff. But it is the stiffness that comes with being confined to one position for too long, a theory confirmed when she stretches her arms and her good leg. 

“I got you something to eat.” 

She lifts it to her mouth and makes a face when the stench reaches her nose. Ultimately she eats it anyhow. “This is dreadful, did you scrape it off of a pan?” 

“I’m not too worried about you.” He ignores the ungrateful commentary. “Bujing seems to think that you’re possessed, but you seem fine to me.” 

“Fine…” she trails off. “I’m not fine.” She takes another bite and her face bunches. “But I’m not infected.” 

“Do you want to come to the dining hall?”

“And grace my ears with Bujing’s lovely banter? No thanks.”

“I think that you should come down and show everyone that you’re still you.” 

Azula sighs. “Yes, I suppose I should.” 

Ruon Jian lets her finish her meal before helping her out of bed. “Shinu is working on new crutches for you. Some of our fencing was broken beyond repair so he’s using those parts to make you something that won’t break as easily.” 

“At least someone is useful.” She huffs as she fights for balance. He holds her securly. “Is Chan the only one who died.” 

Ruon Jian flinches. “Yeah…” 

“What about my serving girl?” 

“Xuia? She’s fine. Sort of, she’s not taking Chan’s death too well; they were dating.” 

Azula sniffs, “only a complete dullard would try dating when the world is ending.” 

“I don’t think so.” Ruon disagrees. “People need to find something to live for.” 

“People need to face that there isn’t anything left to live for.” 


	10. Decision

With a loud clang, the gates come down again. All it takes these days is a furious storm. If the wind gusts powerfully enough, the barricades are useless. And if the barricades can’t hold their own against the wind, Azula can’t see them withstanding an army of the claimed. She watches Bujing and Shinu work to erect the gates once more, a futile effort if she must say so. 

  


Mostly she watches from the doorway or from her bedroom window. She tries to avoid excursions to the outside world, which is easy enough with her leg still in a state of healing. When she does find herself outdoors, that feeling of wrongness takes on a deeper intensity. 

  


Today is different though. 

Today she wants to be outside. 

She feels remotely useless. 

  


On top of useless, she feels faint and in turn her feeling of uselessness doubles. She catches sight of some of the claimed shambling up the palace staircase. Their faces and torsos weep gore where skin has rotted away. She hadn’t noticed before, but there is something else; the faintest outline of something. If she looks close enough she can see silvery-blue wisps writhing like worms or candle smoke around the rims of empty eye sockets and along the craters in decaying skin. On some of the possessed, the spectral fingers are longer, more apparent. On a very select few, the silver blue seems to halo their entire bodies like an aura.

“Those weren’t there before.” She says as Ruon takes a seat next to her. 

  


“Huh?” He asks. 

  


“Mother fuck!” She hears from below; Bujing has finally made note of the intruders. It crosses her mind that she should be out there helping. “Why aren’t you working on the barricade? You have four well-functioning limbs. What about Xuia, why isn’t she…” 

  


“Because the gates won’t last no matter what we do. Those two just like to feel like they’re making a difference.” Ruon shrugs. 

  


Azula turns her attention back to those strange spectral glows. “What are those?”

  


“Those would be the infected.” He laughs. 

  


She gives him a little swat. “No, not them. Those wisps in their eyes.” She points at the figure wrapped in it, “It’s all around that one.” 

  


Ruon cocks his head. “What are you talking about?” 

  


Azula’s heart sinks. She really should be medicated. “Nevermind.” 

  


A few incoherent shouts from below draws her attention and she watches the pair scramble up the steps and into the palace. 

  
  


“We need to secure the palace.” Ruon notes. “And we need to do it quickly.”

  


Azula shakes her head. “We need to  _ leave  _ the palace.” She allows no room for protest. “It’s too big to secure. There are too many entryways and not enough personal to keep them from being breached.”

  


“There are only two of them.” Ruon notes. 

  


“For now.” She replies. “What do you think we’ll be able to do if a heard of them find us?” She watches Bujing trip over a large crack in the stairwell, the angle at which his ankle twists is not lost on her. She must be truly and irreparably mad of mind because a smirk tugs at the corner of her lips. The possessed shamble closer. Bujing cries out and Shinu turns around, at last realizing that his partner has fallen. 

  


Azula takes a breath, she supposes that now is as good a time as any to do a little experimenting. She makes her way to the window and opens it.Leaning against the nearest wall with as little weight on her bad leg as she can manage, she arcs her arms with the grace she hasn’t had in a long while, sparks dance at her fingertips. When lightning is generation to her satisfaction, she releases the energy. 

  


The trajectory is fatal, she lands her mark. The force of it takes the thing’s head off. Bujing looks up with a mixture of relief and horror. The corpse of the possessed drops and Bujing’s face pales completely. He scrambles back and away from some unseen horror. Unseen to him anyhow. 

  


Even from here, she can hear the whispers. At first she almost doesn’t notice it, a bubbling in the blood that pools around the corpse’s neck. A bubbling that she soon realizes is more like a pulsing. Swimming within the crimson is a wormlike tangle of those spectral wisps. 

One of them springs from the mass and misses Bujing by only a few inches. 

  


Shinu grabs the man and drags him up the stairs and into the palace. With a slam of the heavy double doors, the world is hauntingly quiet again save for the gurgles of the still twitching corpse and the occasional slosh.

  


She wonders how long these creatures can survive outside of their host. 

  


**.oOo.**

  


Azula isn’t sure why she had expected gratitude from the man. Still it comes as a slap in the face when the man jabs a finger at her and shouts, “that girl is a demon!” 

  


She crosses her arms and listens to him prattle on. 

  


“She’s one of them, I’m telling you.” 

  


“One of them?” Shinu asks. “She saved you!” 

  


“Takes one to kill one.” He insists. 

  


“I didn’t kill it. I killed the host body.” Azula clearifies. Though she isn’t entirely sure that the body has died at all. It was still spasming when she’d last looked at it some several hours later. She is almost sure that it is still an incubator for those phantom creatures--some type of nest or temporary home until they can find a new and functioning host. 

  


“You can’t prove…” Ruon starts.

  


“I say we send her out there and see how they react to…” 

  


“That is out of the question, Bujing.” Azula knows that tone. It is the very same finalizing one that Li used to placate her when she was just beginning to learn to firebend. “If you cannot see her as a friend then I suggest that you at least recognize her as a valuable asset.” 

  


“Or the undoing of us all.” He argues. 

  


“We are well past the incubation period. She can speak and she move like she used to Her temperament is as it always has been.” Li counters. “I have closely watched over her since she was a baby, I would be able to tell you if we were speaking with something else.” 

  


Azula sits back and takes the argument in.Truth be told she does feel strange and out of sorts. But they don’t need to know it, especially if it can be chalked up to simply recovering from such a close call. 

She hears Bujing continue on with his ranting and raving but she isn’t really listening anymore. She waits for him to finish before flatly stating, “keep me or don’t, I don’t really care. I can make it to the Tribes on my own.” Her leg will continue to be a hinder but it is much easier to hide and stay out of trouble without the weight of a group to hold her back. “Just make up your minds so I can begin planning my next move.” 

  


“You’re staying with us.” Shinu replies as Bujing refutes. 

  


“The majority wants you to stay.” Xuia smiles. 

  


Azula nods. “Then you best find a way to keep him quiet.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I like to think myself patient, but I won’t put up with his outbursts much longer.” 

  


**.oOo.**

  


All in all it has been a productive day. Probably the most pleasant she has had since descending deep into madness. In some sense she is beginning to feel more or less like herself again. Her head has been much clearer, the hallucinations quieter. 

  


She is getting used to getting around on with the crutches. It isn’t ideal and her strides are significantly slower, but she is beginning to feel confident in her ability to retreat from unsavory situations with haste. 

  


Perhaps they can begin to move out soon. She would like to vacate the palace before the two lurking infected grow into a vicious pack of them. The opening of her door interrupts her solitude. 

  


“In this palace, we knock before we enter a room.” She chides. “The world might have gone savage but we can at least retain some scraps of civility.”

  


Ruon Jian rolls his eyes. “Sorry, princess.” She doesn’t like his tone but elects not to comment on it. “I was just thinking that we should change your bandages again. This time I snuck some real ones from the infirmary. We haven’t had to use many yet so it couldn’t hurt.”

  


Azula pats the mattress, he doesn’t take her invitation right away. Instead he begins tending to her leg. “It doesn’t look as bruised or swollen.” He notes. 

  


A good sign. 

  


“We were hoping that you’ll join us downstairs again.” He says as he begins binding her leg up once more. “They want to know the plan.” 

  


“The plan?” 

  


“Yeah. You said that you’d start making plans. They want to hear it. The group is getting kind of restless.” 

  


Luckily for them, they aren’t the only ones. Azula has been jittery enough to make good on her word. “I was actually hoping to leave tomorrow or the day after…”

  


“But your…”

  


She holds up a hand. “I can get around just fine.” She pauses. “We need to comb through the palace and pick out supplies. Forget clothing and blankets, we can scavenge clothes when we need them and make bedding out of what’s available. Comfort is second to survival.” She cringes as she admits as much. “My leg won’t be a problem right away. I know a decent passage system that runs beneath the palace.” 

  


Ruon laughs. “How about you save all of that for when we’re with the rest of the group.”

  


Azula coughs awkwardly. “Right, yes.” 

  


“Done.” He declares. 

  


Azula nods. “Meet me down there, I will be there in a moment.” 

  


He gives her a thumbs up and she watches him exit the room. She takes a deep breath, it has been so long since she has had any sort of authority. She coughs again, this time it is wholly involuntary. A nervous dizziness washes over her. She swallows before looking at her sleeve. 

Nothing. 

Nothing at all. 

  


Just to be sure, she picks up her crutches and wanders into the adjoining bathroom. She spits into the sink. It is free of blood and black sludge. She tilts her head back in relief and exhales. It would seem that she isn’t rotting away. 

She still feels faintly dizzy, but she more confidently writes it off as the product of nerves. 


	11. The Outside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this chapter is lackluster; I got a new tattoo and it is burning like crazy (I already checked with my tattoo artist, it isn't infected or anything, I just applied too much ointment and it irritated the skin). The pain was so intense that it made it kinda hard to think for a while but I was writing anyhow because I needed the distraction.

She stands before the rest of the group. So they have made her their leader. She can’t say that she is surprised, people crave order and there is a sense of normalcy in electing their rightful ruler to fill her role. But she admits that she is jittery about it; she wanted to be fire lord but not like this. 

Bujing holds a cross stare, but him aside, her little band of survivors seem to welcome whatever plan she is about to hand them. She lays it out exactly as she had for Ruon Jian. Reactions are as mixed as she anticipated. Xuia in particular is reluctant to flee the pseudo safety of the palace. 

"We can hold the palace." She insists.

"Not for long." Azula counters. "We can barely keep them upright for a whole night." She pauses. "And we're running out of food rations that aren't moldy, rotten." She doesn't mention that she needs more bandages. They are running short on makeshift ones too.

"So? Well just do a supply run." Bujing shrugs. Azula's already sour mood plummets further. Prior to her vocalizing leaving the palace, the man had been all gung-ho about the prospect of getting the hell out and moving on.

She doesn't bother calling him on it.

"Were not going to make it to the port in one day." Xuia points out. "Where are we going to stay?"

"The coronation hall." Azula answers. "It kept them out so well that I didn't realize that the world had ended."

"Grab your food rations and some medical supplies. We'll depart in fifteen minutes."

"What will you be doing?" Bujing asks.

"I've already got my things together. I'll be planning our route and possible rest points." Truth be told she mostly aims to work out how to combat these things. She has been thinking it over all night and has come no closer to figuring it out.

The man spares her a final scowl before venturing off to tackle his own preparations.

"We are lucky to have you." Li remarks. Though Azula doesn't feel very appreciated. "People need order, someone to look up to. You are those things."

"I suppose, yes." Yet she feels as though she has no control at all. She is merely an illusion of it. At best she is simply the closest thing that they have.

"This lot needs your careful planning, princess."

She nods.

She just hopes that she can retain her sharp mind...

And what remains of her health.

She looks at her leg and takes a deep breath. She silently prays that her handicap won't hinder her as much as she anticipates.

**.oOo.**

It is liberating and horrifying in equal measure to be outside once again. They had trekked most of the journey beneath the palace, through the narrow twists and turns of another one of Ozai's underground bunkers. 

She has hoped to run into a familiar and uninflected face down there but was only met by a warm and musky gust of air and a chilling, grave-like silence.

But there is safety in the stillness. Security in that nothing and no one is around. 

That makes it all the harder to step out into the dangers of the above ground. 

Xuia grows increasingly restless as they move further from the bunker and its connection to the palace.

The air that Azula breathes in now makes her miss the stale air of the secret bunker. It smells of rot and infection an aroma that is both sour and sweet at the same time. She crinkles her nose as she gives her surroundings a full scan. 

Barren. 

She thinks that they must all be gathered at the palace, preparing for an attack. 

She furrows her brows, wondering why she thinks that the infected are organized. Decidedly, she chalks it up to having heard Chan talk to her only moments before he began weeping illness. 

_ An evolution _ . The theory echos in her mind. She never did mention to the others that Chan didn’t die as slow as Li mentioned that Lo had. She shudders to herself. “If we hurry, we can make it to the coronation square before the sun falls.” 

She isn’t sure that she is ready to be back in close proximity to the chains that had almost killed her. She takes another deep breath, she has already pushed her leg terribly hard, she is beginning to fear that it will buckle. Agni, what would they think of her then. Bujing would leap at that opportunity. 

“You doing okay?” Ruon asks.

“I’m doing just about as well as I can.” She replies. Admittedly, his concern is touching. 

“If you need a break Chan can carry you…” 

Her heart sinks and his eyes go dull as he realizes what he had just said. “Shinu could help you.” He corrects himself. “He’s a pretty big guy.” 

“Yes, that’s why my father made him one of the head guards.” Azula replies. In the silence, prickles of annoyance arise in her mind as she realizes that she has let herself become distracted. Spirits! She could have lead them right into a crowd of the infected. Ruon continues to make conversation but her focus is now on the world around them. 

The gates are close, but not nearly close enough. She frowns as she finds the spot where she had broken her leg, the offender is a noteworthy crater in the pavement, just large enough to hook the pointed edge of her boot upon. Her leg seems to flare up in pain at the sight of it. She hobbles passed it with a scowl. 

They march in silence, to match the quiet of the world around them. She notices then that there are signs of life that she had missed during her clumsy journey to the palace. Mostly the avians are untouched. Various species of bird zip overhead, undisturbed by the going ons below. The wind still blows, but it is unnerving. There is a peculiar way that vacant, abandoned streets can shape the sound of a simple gust. 

It is ghostly. 

Chilling. 

The few other sounds come from their footfalls on the pavement and sound of her crutches connecting with cobblestone. The clamor of them causes her to cringe each time. Azula truly does resent being viewed as weak and a burden; she knows that she won’t be helping her case any…

Regardless, she bites her lip and wanders up to Shinu. 

As soon as she finds herself in his arms she finds herself on the receiving end of another rant. “I told you all!” He begins. 

She decides that she doesn’t need to hear any more of his tirade. “I can walk just fine on my own.” She declares. “But the crutches are rather loud. Not as loud as you of course. Still, I’d like to avoid the attention.” 

Bujing scoffs and makes as if to argue more. A low and gurgling wail brings them to a standstill. Suddenly he looks at her as though they have been great friends for ages. Azula listens for the call again and whispers to Li, “are they usually vocal?”

“Only when they are attacking something.” The old woman answers. 

Azula nods, as the noise pierces the air again. It is tiered like the palace roof; each level is more haunting than the next. It awakens a very primal portion of her, a fear-driven part of her. That same part of her is what tells her that the voice is, in fact, layered and not several people speaking at once. It is the voice of the infected. 

She shivers at the prospect of having such a distortion in her voice. 

It leaves an itch in the back of her mind; a faint recollection…

“They sound distant.” She observes quietly. “We need to make sure they stay that way.” It is a task easier said than done considering that they come from the direction of the coronation square. 


	12. The Outside Bites

_ “We need to clear them out.” _ It had been her call…

For once she agrees with Bujing; they made her their leader, this is on her. 

It is all her…

**.oOo.**

_ The noise seems to come from all around a macabre choir of moans, wails, and liquidy, guttural rambles. The hellish racket leaves Azula with an overwhelming desire to cup her hands over her ears and scream.  _

_ Scream just to drown out that Agni-awful chatter.  _

_ It reminds her too much of the clutter in her own mind. If it weren’t for Xuia remarking that they should  _ really  _ consider going back to the palace Azula may have allowed herself to believe that it was all in her head.  _

_ “There’s nothing left for us in the palace.” Azula holds firm. “What we need to do is pick up the pace.” But she herself is growing weary. She reminds herself of what happened the last time she had let paranoia get the better of her; she glances at Li. Lonely Li.  _

_ Azula very nearly gags at the vile putridness carried on the breeze; rancid meat and sour milk. A foul touch of rotten eggs and mold. All amplified by the heat of a Fire Nation afternoon. The odor is unmistakable. “We’re almost there.” She notes.  _

_ “It smells like a fucking compost.”  _

It practically is one _. Azula notes, but it isn’t a productive one. The smell grows more pungent as they grow closer to the former celebration grounds. She can hear chokes and gags all around her, and nearly doubles over in one of her own. The foul perfume is infinitely stronger than when she’d last been here.  _

_ “Put me down.” And Shinu helps her regain her footing and her independence.  _

_ She and her party weave between clouds of flies that gather in swarms around meat that has gone black with age. She can recognize none of the food lining the tables. All of it has been reduced to thick sludgy mush. The only thing that really distinguishes one goopy pile from the next are the smells. Each sports it’s own unique rancidness. It is truly a feast for a corpse. She finds it incredibly easy to imagine the infected making their way over and helping themselves to some chunky slop.  _

_ When they reach the center of the grotesque banquet Shinu doubles over and in a series of more intense chokes and gags adds to both the smell and the slosh. Azula’s face bunches in disgust. Burying her nose in her clothing she utters a, “let’s get the hell away from here.”  _

_ It must truly be unrepentantly foul, for Bujin is the first to say, “she’s right, let’s hurry the fuck up.” Before he takes Shinu by the shoulders and practically drags the man along. He doesn’t even have time to wipe the vomit from his mouth.  _

_ What a horrific distraction it had been and Azula curses herself for letting a simple odor throw her from her focus.  _

_ In her defense, everyone else had also been completely enveloped in the smell. _

_ Still it doesn’t take from the problem; the uncanny wails are significantly closer now. And none of them had noticed.  _

_ Azula wonders faintly if the scent had been a trap. Are they intelligent enough to use something like that to their advantage? They are possessed. Possessed and infected, not brain dead. She considers--not for the first time--with dread that they have intellenance and organization. _

_ When it comes down to it, she realizes that she and Bujing agree on things that truly matter. “We really fucked this one up.” The man remarks.  _

_ She fixes her stare on the source of the sound and chides herself for not thinking of each and every possibility. Had the time she spent chained to the grate diminished her careful thinking that much? _

_ If they could topple the gates surrounding the palace, of course they could make their way into the ones the protected the coronation square. There aren’t that many of them, she counts maybe two or three. But for all of the racket they make, there might as well be more.  _

_ The three are in various stages of decay. The first of them is sloughing skin like a popsicle in heat. The second is mostly free of decay, but her eyes a pools of blood and a black ooze weeps from her nose.  _

_ The third is a true monstrosity. Veins of black rise on his arms and flow into fingers that are completely inky and somewhat bloated. His eyes are bloodshot and leaking and his skin is cratered with rot. He reeks of infection. A scent that overtakes the uneaten victory feast.  _

_ Azula swallows back her revulsion just long enough to make note of the one thing that they all have in common; if she stares long enough she can see those same fingers of silvery-blue energy wriggling within the places where skin has rotted away. She could swear that she sees them snaking around beneath the skin that is still healthy...relatively speaking anyhow. _

_ “We need to clear them out.” She speaks. They look at her the same way her servants had when she banished one of their own. Absurdly enough, it strikes Azula then, that Xuia had been among the group that had witnessed it. Yes, the look she gives Azula now is much the same; perhaps there is an even higher degree of horror in her eyes.  _

_ “How the hell are we going to do that?” Bujing asks.  _

_ “I can lead them away.”  _

_ “You can’t lead them away.” Ruon-Jian motions to her crutches.  _

_ She rolls her eyes, “honestly, do you really think that I am going to make bait of myself?” She finds what she decides is a good place to aim. “I am going to generate some lightning and throw it over there. If they take the bait, we will have to work quickly to patch up the holes in the gate. Clearly it isn’t safe so we will move on at sunrise.”  _

_ She waits for Bujing to protest, but the man keeps his mouth shut for once. With as much speed as she can manage, she sends a bolt sailing through the collapsed gate opposite of where they stand.  _

_ The three infected stare stupidly in its direction. They do not move.  _

_ Azula draws in a sharp breath. She can strike them down, but if they are anything like the one at the palace, they will only drop and bleed parasites.  _

_ She tries a second bolt.  _

_ One of them shambles towards it, but as soon as the sparks fade it’s interest is lost.  _

_ Once again, Azula ponders if they are mindless or intelligent. Perhaps they are something in between; dull-headed until the parasites act on their control.  _

_ Every hair on her body raises, the wails subside and make way for those terrible whispers.  _

_ “We need to go back!” Xuia’s eyes are starting to well.  _

_ “We’ll never make it by nightfall.” Azula counters. She doesn’t know if they are more active at night, but if these things are some warped and twisted spirit parasites, then they are bound to be. _

_ “I’m getting tired of this!” Bujing declares and ignites a flame in his hand. _

_ “Wait!” Azula shouts.  _

_ Naturally, he chooses then to get back to protesting her every suggestion. He sends the fire hurtling at the nearest of the three--the one with the melting skin--and with force enough to knock it’s head off. Granted, it was a delicate target.  _

_ For a moment, the whispers die off, leaving only a dull ringing in her ears. Something in Azula lolls with dread. For a few heartbeats, the body is still. And then they emerge, those worm-like whisps. But these ones are more akin to snakes in size and width.  _

_ Severing the host’s head, Azula realizes, is like popping a cork off of a shaken champagne bottle. The spirits within emerge an a smokey current of hushed chatter. The group takes a uniformed step back.  _

_ Bujing, to Azula’s dismay, strikes the other two down. She’d take him down herself if she didn’t plan on using him as a shield. “Fools!” she shouts as the rest of them follow in his lead. The infected, don’t seem phased by their bending.  _

_ “Are you going to just stand there!?” Bujing glares at her.  _

_ “Doing nothing at all is safer than what you’re trying.” She hisses.  _

_ The only people who seem to listen are Li and Xuia. Ruon, Shinu, and a cluster of other survivors whose names she hadn’t bothered with all follow in Bujing’s lead. She watches one of the newly freed whisps snake around one of the unnamed survivor’s leg. The man goes tense as it make its way up. No one notices his struggle. They only hear the whispers growing in volume next to them. And so they distance themselves, leaving the man to his suffering. The tendril reaches is open mouth and crawls in.  _

_ Ruon drives a katana through his chest. Azula wishes that he wouldn’t have. The specter is weeping out of the wound poised on the closest host to itself.  _

_ She sees it in his eyes that he knows. _

If you can feel it, someone is going to die, you just have to hope that it’s not you.

_ She can feel it too and she knows that it isn’t her this time. She knows because she can see it now, as plainly as she sees Ruon but in the way that she sees her mother--like something that shouldn’t be there. Something that is for her eyes only.  _

_ This time when she draws her lightning, she doesn’t aim it at the host as Ruon Jian does. She aims for the specter.  _

_ It remains undeterred. So she tries her fire. This brings it delay, delay enough for Ruon Jian to break out of the host’s hold and scramble back. She can’t rush to his side and pull him to safety, he has to help himself from here.  _

_ Something in her mind screams and her head pounds furiously. Whispers give way to a shrill and merciless ringing as she burns away the writhing mass of worms that squirm at the open neck of the first host. The ringing intensifies until a splitting feeling agonizes her head. But the mass seems to shrivel away.  _

_ A second large snake emerges from one of the craters in the third host’s skin, this time--with her useless leg and splitting headache to blame--Azula doesn’t act quick enough. Her lightning collides with empty ground where the large wisp had once been.  _

_ It is now several feet from its host and another several from Xuia. She fires again. _

_ “What the hell are you doing!?” Bujing shouts. “The infected is over there.” He points.  _

_ Azula ignores him and prepares another attack. A familiar sensation pulls her attention. Host three is spasming on the floor shedding his skin in fleshy slabs that land with audible plops. In the mess is a sea of silvery-blue.  _

_ They spring up and propel themselves at her. Their whispers assault her mind.  _ We should have stayed in the inside, oh shit, oh shit, oh… 

_ She realizes that they are whispering the host’s last thoughts. His final thought mixed with his darkest secrets.  _

_ Accompanying them is a sense of doom and failure. Though she thinks that the feeling of failure comes from within.  _

_ She muster up just enough energy to lift a will of fire between she and the tendrils. The ringing in her ears is practically bringing her to her knees now. But the ominous and oppressive feeling is retreating.  _

_ “I think that they’re leaving!” Shinu calls. “It’s getting quieter.”  _

_ Ruon Jian nods in agreement. His smile fades when he looks at her.  _

_ But she isn’t paying attention to herself. She observes the tail of host three’s specter disappearing into Xuia’s ear. Host three himself is nothing but a visceral pool of blood, entrails, and blackened flesh.  _

_ It is too much for her. She doesn’t realize that she is sprawled out on the ground with sweat on her forehead and blood weeping from her ears until Ruon drops down next to her.  _

**.oOo.**

She spends the night curled up (as much as her knee would allow) in a ball, trembling lightly. It was her plan, her brilliant plan, to leave the palace and underprepared at that, she realizes. It was her plan to face them instead of retreating. 

And know they have lost Xuia. Agni, they don’t even know, but they have lost Xuia. 

Xuia, beyond a soft, “I feel dizzy,” doesn’t know that she is claimed. They attribute her light-headedness to stress in the same way that they attribute Azula’s own distress to it. 

She ought to tell them. Yet she can’t bring herself to even sit up.

Ruon Jian brushes some hair out of her face and hands her a waterskin. When she doesn’t take it, he uncorks it and slips the lip of the waterskin between her lips. He withdraws it and sets the waterskin aside. “You’re bleeding.” He gently touches her nose. 

With no energy left and having so freshly spent the rest of her dignity, she simply wipes it with the back of her hand. Just as he had said, it comes away smeared with red.

“I’m fine.” She insists quietly. “Don’t tell them.” She now only whispers. “Please don’t tell them.” 


	13. The Coronation

When he retreats, Azula goes tense. But he returns and this time he has a cloth, he dabs her nose with it. She is still shaking some. She nuzzles her cheek against the grate. Her trembles intensify once more. But she doesn’t move, no she remains where she is; in the same spot she had been confined to. The chains gleam in the moonlight where they lay next to her. She feels sick and uncomfortable and it has nothing to do with whatever infection may or may not be coursing through her. 

She thinks that a tear or two have managed to escape.

Ruon Jian follows her stare. “This is where you were stuck, isn’t it?”

She nods.

“Why don’t you sleep somewhere that doesn’t give you flashbacks?” 

A fair question. “We shouldn’t have left the palace. We weren’t ready…”

“This isn’t your fault. You don’t have to punish your…” 

“Xuia is possessed.” She says flatly. “I made the call to attack. I may as well have killed her myself.” She adds. “Do you know what we do with murders?” He opens his mouth but she answers her own question. “We lock them up.” She gestures to the chains. 

“She isn’t infected, look.” He points at her. Completely unaware of her own predicament, she is laughing at something Li has said.

“Just give her a few days and her eyes will go red like Lo’s did.” She wonders if her eyes are red. 

“Why don’t you join the rest of the group instead of laying here by yourself?” 

“I want to be alone.” This isn’t strictly true, but she doesn’t want to be in a group either. “I should be alone.” She doesn’t mention what her nose bleed might mean.

“Bujing was the one who attacked first.” Ruon Jian pointed out. She heaves herself into a sitting position and with the shift, the blood pours from her nose more freely. He takes her hand and gives it a squeeze. “Someone needs to make the tough calls, right? For all we know, the infected might have broken into the palace and the same thing would have happened. At least we’re trying to save ourselves now.”

Azula shrugs. For the first time in ages, she thinks of her father. This wouldn’t have happened if father were leading them. He would have known what to do.

“At least come sleep somewhere that doesn’t make you feel miserable.” He is staring at the chains again. She notices a small ring of blood rimming them from when she had jerked at them too hard. Her wrists bare light scars from her vicious tugging. She holds them out in front of her and turns her gaze to Ruon. He takes her hands and his own stare finds where hers had just left. He traces his thumb over the slightly raised skin. “I don’t think I would have lasted if I were stuck like that.” 

“You’d be surprised…” Azula trails off. “At what a person can endure.” 

She wonders how much Xuia will endure before she is no longer Xuia. 

Ruon carefully scoops her up and carries her away from the grate and over to Li. The old woman smiles in way of a greeting. Away from the rushing water that runs beneath the grate, Azula can now hear crickets and toads chattering away. It would almost be peaceful if she didn’t dread a whisper or a wail cutting through the silence.

Li’s smile fades at the site of Azula’s weary and worn expression. “Sit her down over here.” She says to Ruon, patting the spot next to her. Ruon does as he is told. His hand remains on her back and she doesn’t have the energy to push his hand away. Deep down, Azula decides that it is nice to be on the receiving end of a comforting gesture. She can’t remember the last time anyone has gone out of their way to try to console her. 

“When Azula was a child, I would tell her stories about dragons.” Li smiles. 

“That must have been fun. My dad used to tell me about Ember Island lore.” Ruon notes fondly. 

“Would you like to hear a tale about The Dragon Emperor and his ruby encrusted egg?”

“I’m not in the mood for bedtime stories.” Azula lies.

Li’s enthusiasm doesn’t fade. “Please, let an old woman retain some of her old life and thing things that made her happy.”

“Oh, alright.” Azula decides not to put up a fight, lest the woman concede.

“I’ve never heard this one.” Ruon remarks, leaving Azula with the impression that even if she hadn’t agreed to listen, he probably would have gotten the story out of Li.

“It starts on a the peak of a craggy mountain…”

_ The Dragon Emperor extends his claw and flexes it. _ Azula finishes in her head before Li vocalizes the line. 

Li’s stories had lulled her to sleep, but she doesn’t remain there. A harsh pounding in her head rouses her awake. She isn’t alone in her restlessness. Bujing is awake too. She scowls to herself, of course he would be the only other person awake. She puts her head back down and pretends like she is sleeping. But Bujing’s pacing is noisy and the noise is amplified by the ache in her head. 

She sits back up once more and grumbles a, “knock it off.” 

To her surprise the man doesn’t argue with her. Instead he offers a curt, “I thought that you were sleeping like everyone else.” 

  
  


**.oOo.**

He eyes the former princess. With her tired eyes and her grumpy pout she looks like a mere child. He supposes that that’s what she is. He doesn’t recall precisely but he thinks that she is something like fifteen years old, give or take. Maybe a year younger or older than that.

No matter, he doesn’t think that someone so young has any business leading a group regardless of birth status. 

He had taken to command his own military sect at thirteen and look what it has made of him. He runs his hand over his face and utters a quite and bitter laugh. 

He ought to try to get to bed but his thoughts don’t let him. It’s a merciless concoction of drab thoughts. Most notably he fears the princess, fears and fears for her. He had never taken a shine to she and her arrogance, but it is never pleasant to see an attack. 

He had little trust for her when she dragged herself back to the palace gates and that little trust diminished further when she rose up after she had been claimed. 

He can’t name a person who didn’t succumb.

Even if the girl is parasite free, he fears what could be making her immune.

He observes the way she sneers at his response. Watches her lay back down. And, after a few hours, when she thinks that he is asleep, he hears her cry softly to herself. 

He is certain that he knows why.

It is the very thing that has him awake. 

He peers at Xuia. 

And he finds himself pacing again. 

He contemplates…

It would be merciful, but he can’t bring himself to do it so he tucks his knife away and resumes his pacing. It was he who struck out and drew attention to them--to Xuia--and he isn’t even man enough to do right by her. 

**.oOo.**

Ruon Jian is still nearby. He frowns at the scarce food rations. “Good morning,” he greets at her first audible stir. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and mumbles a good morning of her own. He stoops down and unbandages her leg. “Can you wiggle your toes.”

This time they move for her. 

“That’s a good sign.” He comments with a grin. At least someone is in good spirits. 

Azula herself is in a dreadful mood. She is tired and her stomach is recoiling in anticipation. 

“Are we still heading out or have plans changed now that we’ve been attacked.” Xuia asks. 

“Plans have been... slightly altered.” Azula replies. Perhaps more than slightly depending on how her next move ends. Life has dealt her a nasty deck and she decides that she will draw the worst card from it and lay it down. 

She waits for the group to assemble and get relatively comfortable before speaking. “Yesterday was embarrassment and complete failure.” She lets them murmur their agreement or disapproval. “You are already aware that one member of our group had been killed…” She pauses. “But there is a second person who is also dead. Either you haven’t noticed or you don’t want to.” 

She hates the petrified look that settles upon Xuia’s face. 

It would seem that she isn’t as ignorant as Azula had assumed. 

Azula wishes that the girl would have spared her that terrified and helpless look. She wishes that the girl would have grown furious, would have spat in her direction or screamed something about how she is simply crazed and paranoid. 

It would have made things easier…

She doesn’t allow her former servant time to dwell on it. There is only the faintest sign of recognition as the light flickers out of her eyes. Her body drops as thunder rolls. 

“What the hell is wrong with you!?” Exclaims the woman standing next to Xuia’s still form. Azula finds herself taken by a mental image of them dragging her over to that grate and tightening the chains around her wrists.

“That question would be better asked if I let her rot away and infect everyone else.” Azula clasps her hands behind her back. Though she begins to think that the question isn’t about what she had just done but the manner in which she had done it; unflinchingly and unblinkingly as ever. “It was a mercy kill.” 

Though she is mostly trying to alleviate her own unease. 

“You all have an hour, I will let you know where we are headed then.” Azula says. “Dismissed.” She ascends--with some degree of struggle--the stairs and makes her way into the coronation building in hopes of remaining undisturbed. 

  
The building is as eerily vacant as the palace. Just as vacant and just as vast and sparsely furnished. She beings to wonder why everything in the Fire Nation is so large and open. The little furniture that does decorate the room is coated with dust. The floors and the, save for the places on the floor in which most of her group had slept, have a layer of filth upon them as well.

And the red, gold outlined, carpets have faded in color as did the curtains on the window. The only thing that remained vibrant was the curtain hung in the doorway that flashed the gold embroidery of the Fire Nation insignia.

In the corner of the room, haphazardly discarded is her ceremonial robe, the very same one she had worn during her coronation. She picks it up and wraps it around her shoulders. It had fit loose before, now she has to hold it on. She makes a mental note to scour the place for edible food before they leave. From her pocket she draws the fire lord’s crown. It glistens as she turns it over in her hand. She thinks it rather pathetic that she has clung to it as though it means anything anymore. No less, she has already given her first official declaration and delivered her first public execution, she may as well wear the crown that gives her such authority. 

With the headpiece fashioned into her disorderly bun, she stands herself in front of the mirror. Her cheeks have grown hollower still with stress and such thin rations, they are smeared with mud and dirt. There isn’t an inch of her that doesn’t host at least a little grime. She is terribly pale and with dismay she notes the faintest hue of pink in her eye. 

She shudders, hoping that she is only imagining things.

But she hadn’t imagined the wisps…

She leans closer to the mirror trying to catch a flash of silver-blue in her own eyes. She sees nothing other than the soft pink where white should be.

Her belly lurches twice over; she is a hypocrite. She dropped Xuia in an instant for the infection that worked its way in and yet she stands before the glass riddled with disease herself. She swallows, deciding that this coronation is worse than her first.

Again she thinks of her father. 

He would know what to do…

He would have the guts to do it...

She takes a deep breath and brings a healthy burst of lightning to her fingers and holds it to her head, toying with the idea of letting it go. Her reflection stares back, eyes full of fear and loathing. 

“I don’t know why we didn’t just sleep in here!” She jolts at Ruon’s exclamation and the lightning dies on her finger tips. 

She gives the mirror at her palms a final glance. Perhaps not tonight, but eventually. As long as she takes herself out before she kills everyone else. “I wouldn’t have been able.” She answers. 

“I would have.” Ruon shrugs. “What are you doing in here anyways.” 

“Just making my leadership official.” She gestures to her regal attire. “Something to do with a sense of normalcy, or whatever Li was trying to do with her bedtime story.” She decides that it is better to omit her death wish. 

“Well, happy coronation day.” Ruon Jian says. “I think that the crown suits you.” 

Azula gives a soft hum, “it does, doesn’t it.” Which is just what she had said of the Fire Lord title when father handed it to her. Just what she had told herself before making a mess of things the first time. “Hopefully this time my coronation won’t end with me bound to a grate.”

She can see it on his face that he isn’t certain of whether he is supposed to laugh or not. In the end he gives a nervous chuckle. “I think that this crowd is fine with you keeping your crown.” 

“I just killed Xuia.” 

“They need to know that they have a leader who will do what it takes to keep them alive.” Ruon shrugs. “I don’t know many people who can do what you do.” 

_ You don’t know any other morally bankrupt lunatics _ , she thinks to herself. “Yes, I suppose that you are right.” 

He finds a spot on the wall and leans against it. “So...” he begins with a sly smirk, “did you give everyone an hour of preparation for their sakes or because you have no idea where we’re going from here.”

“I know where we’re going.” Azula rolls her eyes. 

Ruon quirks a brow. 

“We’re going to Capital City Prison.”


	14. Gusts

Their outrage comes as no surprise when she announces the new destination. She is well aware that the prison is in the opposite direction and that they all resent the idea of backtracking. 

She is also painfully aware that she looks indecisive and quite foolish. 

An unreliable leader. 

Which is precisely why she needs to find her father. 

Her tummy flutters at the thought of seeing him again. It is both an anxious jitter and a sense of hope. She misses the man even if he’d scorned her the last time she’d seen him. 

She tries not to dwell too much on the possibility that he is no longer alive, but she can’t put aside a vivid image of him prowling about with his flesh rotting in places and silver-blue wisps in his eyes. 

If a man as mighty and powerfully built as he could be reduced to nothing but decay then her lithe body doesn’t stand a chance. 

“You alright?” Ruon Jian asks. He means well but the constant asking of that question is becoming almost patronizing, as though he thinks that she cannot hold her own. 

“I’m fine.” She lies. 

“Do you want me to…” He reaches out. She nearly swats his helping hand away. 

“I can handle myself.” They already think her weak, she doesn’t need to flaunt it. 

“It won’t pay to push yourself.” Li comments. 

“It won’t pay to grow lazy either.” She counters. She is certain that there is a fine line between the two and that she is teetering between the two. It helps little that she occasionally finds herself feeling very faint. She wonders if it is the infection running its course. 

The journey back to the palace has been especially drab without Xuia and her chipper demeanor. 

“You’re quiet today.” Ruon gives another unsolicited observation. 

“I’m always quiet.” 

“More than usual.” 

“What does it matter to you?” She asks. 

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess that I just don’t like seeing you like this.”

“You should worry about yourself.” 

He lets a few minutes pass in peaceful silence before pestering her further, why are we going to the prison?”

Azula frowns, she can’t imagine that he would think highly of her if she revealed that she simply wanted the comfort of her father’s company. “Security.” She says at last. “The point of a prison is to keep things from getting out, it should work just as well to keep things from getting in.” 

“But we’re getting further from the port.” Bujing interjects. “That was our end goal, was it not?” 

“It was, but we weren’t fully prepared. Anyways we don’t need a port, we can use any body of w...”

“You weren’t fully prepared.” He cuts her off with a scowl and a gesture to her leg. 

“Yet I was the one who put things back in order after your rash decision.” 

“I wouldn’t have had to…”

Azula feels a frail hand on her shoulder. “Leave him to his rants, princess.” 

She frowns but ultimately decides to listen to her advisor. 

**.oOo.**

Two hours in and Azula finds herself wishing that something would happen. The only thing worse than that feeling of ominous and unseen doom is feeling nothing at all. Nothing but a nagging sense of paranoia; the itching feeling of anticipation. It claws at her mercilessly. 

The hushed chatter around her tells her that she isn’t alone in her discontent. Somewhere along the way, the group has become more compact. She hadn’t noticed how close Ruon and Li had inched towards her. Or maybe it was she who had closed the space. More likely, all three of them made some unspoken agreement to huddle closer. 

She finds that she has her chi at the ready. Shinu has been wandering with his sword drawn and his arm protectively around a woman that Azula hadn’t taken much notice of until then. The woman is somewhat tall, on the heavier side, and with what has to be Earth Kingdom blood for her eyes are a blazing green. 

Azula strains her ears for a whisper. A moan. A scream. 

Anything. 

But she only hears their foot falls and the slapping of fabric as a banner flaps in the breeze. 

_ The breeze... _ Azula notes. 

She looks skyward. 

It is still blue, but the air tastes of rain. 

They are long overdue for a storm. 

“Is that it?” The green eyed girl questions. The abruptness and volume of her remark causes a flinch to ripple through the group. The ripple stops at Azula who replies with a plain, “yes.” She aims to keep chit-chat to a minimum until they are securely within the prison walls. 

It is still a good distance away. Maybe an hour or so, but she can see its looming, smokestack. 

“Maybe we should go back to the palace instead?” Someone else suggests. 

She isn’t willing to write the idea off entirely. “If the prison doesn’t work out, we will.” 

**.oOo.**

The storm breaks suddenly in a relentless downpour. Faintly, Azula hopes that it will wash some of the blood and gore from the streets. More likely it will just gather it in waterlogged clumps on the sides of the road. 

The wind blasts her face and whips strands of hair into her eyes. They cling uncomfortably to her cheeks and neck. She squits against the onslaught of raindrops. Pushing forward is difficult between the force of the wind and the constant threat of her crutches slipping and sliding. 

“I guess that we will be staying in the palace again after all.” Azula calls over the wind. For once no one questions her judgement. She isn’t sure that she will be able to make it to the palace, much less to the prison. But the howl of gusts in her ears reminds her of the urgency. The same howling gusts instill a new fear. A dread that she won’t be able to hear the spectral parasites coming. 

“Can I help you?” Shinu breaks away from the half blood girl. 

She lets her pride get swept away on the breeze and nods, handing her crutches to Ruon Jian. This time when Shinu lifts her into his arms, Bujing keeps his mouth shut. At least the man knows to keep his mouth shut when it truly matters. 

She finds only a hint of comfort in Shinu’s arms. Soaked to the bone, she feels completely miserable. Miserable, dismal and terribly stressed. Three emotions that seem to ebb off of each member of their pathetic party. 

Perhaps that is why it had been so easy…

She sees only the faintest glimmer of silver-blue before Shinu falls to the floor. Her body topples with him. Having already been well and ambushed her sharp, echoing, and attention grabbing cry matters none. 

She can’t help the whimper that leaves her lips upon seeing the state of her leg. The angle at which he dropped her has left it in worse shape than it had been initially. She thinks that she can see bone poking through skin. Her body shakes all over; the product of agony, rage, and fear. 

She watches uselessly as phantom fingers branch out like roots, touching each member of her group. Someone tries to run; he doesn’t see the shimmering wall of spirits, but he certainly feels it as it drifts down like a blanket in the breeze, enveloping him entirely. His body seems to fade as it suctions to his skin, he contorts violently as it sinks in. 

The green eyed girl screams for Shinu as Bujing tries to pull her away. His efforts are a waste, wormlike tendrils are already crawling from Shinu’s arm to hers. Though Bujing pulls her away just in the knick of time, the parasites fling up and latch onto her still outstretched arm. They look like stringy threads as they bury themselves within her skin.

Azula scrambles back on her remaining three limbs. 

In such close proximity, Bujing doesn’t stand a chance. For a moment it looks as though they aren’t going to make a movie. “Put her down, Bujing!” Azula calls. The man hastily infected shoves the half blood away.

She scans him for silver-blue as he picks her up. 

“Where are Ruon and Li?” 

The man doesn’t answer as he sprints for the palace stairs. With her in his arms he struggles to push the mangled gate open. She expects him to set her down and save himself. Yet he holds her with a degree of tightness. 

“Find the breech.” She rasps. 

The man nods and scans the fence and finds the place where it has bent and collapsed. Her heart seizes when he puts her down. She turns her head and sees Ruon. He is bolting in the opposite direction. “Ruon!” She shouts, her voice is buried beneath the storm sounds. She watches him disappear into an alleyway. 

She hears a grunt and the grind of metal and she is in Bujing’s arms again. 

She is too numb to feel any sort of relief. 

The climb to the palace doors seems to pass in slow motion. She catches snippets of silver-blue and muffled cries. A rustle of clothes as someone or something rushes by. The sound of rain beating the pavement is amplified to her ears. 

The door slams and Bujing sets her down. In a series of more huffs and grunts he pushes tables and chairs and suits of armor in front of the door. Never has she felt more worthless. This is her fault and she had done the least to fix it. 

She had done nothing at all. 

With his barricade erected, Bujing comes to sit next to her. “It’s going to be a long night.” He mutters as something throws itself at the door. “I hope that you know of a cozy secret annex we can hide in.” 

“There’s one in the hallway. Move the decorative vase on the left side of my bedroom door and firebend into the hole.” 

The man carefully picks her up again. 

“You should leave me here.” She suggests. It is what she has earned for herself. The price of incompetence. She awaits his eager reply. 

Instead he says, “let’s get you somewhere warm and dry.” 


	15. Li's Theory

“I killed all of us.” Azula whispers. 

At her wits end, she weeps quite openly. 

She expects Bujing to sneer and agree. Instead, the man silently tends to her leg. In one excruciating motion, he pops the bone back into place. She isn’t sure that, that is proper care. She doesn’t get to ponder it before her world goes dark. 

She wakes up on the floor with her leg bound in a fresh makeshift cast. 

She feels a cool wet rag on her forehead. “She’s awake.” 

“Li?” She asks weakly. She tries to sit up.

“Shh…” the old woman whispers. “Just keep laying. 

“I got everyone killed.” She says again. 

“It was going to happen eventually.” Bujing says, gruffly. 

“Why did you save me?” She asks. “You should have let me die with the rest of them.”

“You and the old moth-bat are all I have left.” Bujing grumbles. “I can’t afford to be choosey about the company I keep.” She almost doesn’t hear him add, “maybe I’d have more company if I would have accepted that sooner.” 

They are quite a sorry trio.

Azula tries to sit up again, earning herself a glare from Li. 

This wouldn’t have happened if her father had been around. “We need to get to the prison.” She says with more urgency. 

“What’s at the prison?” Bujing asks. 

“My father.” She answers quietly. She braces herself for the man to accuse her of reckless selfishness. Instead he surprises her again. 

“If he’s alive I’m sure that he’ll be glad to have you back. I’d do anything to see my girl again.” 

“Is she dead?”

“I like to think that she made it out. She was headed for the Earth Kingdom before the disaster.” 

Azula decides that she should end the conversation there, she doesn’t want to get attached to the man in any way. She had let herself get close to Ruon and now all she has left of him is a mournful ache in her heart. 

**.oOo.**

A sensation of uncomfortable warmth and a light pressure in her sinuses coaxes Azula from sleep. She winces in pain as she registers the pounding in her head. Her face is flushed and has a light sheen of sweat. This time her shivers have nothing to do with fear. 

She picks up her crutches, only briefly wondering which of her remaining companions had gone out and fetched them for her. She makes her way to the bathroom adjacent to her bedroom and takes a reluctant look in the mirror. 

Hey eyes are still clear, the whites still white. Her face is noticeably red with fever. She thinks that her cheeks have grown hollower still. It makes her nauseous with anxiety. Dread doesn’t truly set in until she notices the light gush of blood pooling from her nose. 

She realizes that this is the sensation that has caused her to wake so rudely. 

Her lower lip begins to tremble. 

She is, indisputably, dying. 

She has know it all along, but seeing symptoms start to rise is another matter. 

She takes a deep and shaky breath and wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve. 

She scans herself all over for even a faint shimmer of silver-blue. She doesn’t understand why they hide from her when she knows that they are there. 

Azula swallows, wondering if she should isolate herself. But if it were to happen, wouldn’t she have spread the infection already? She rubs her hands over her face. She finds herself wishing that she had never freed herself from the gate at all. 

She gives another gasping cry. 

She can’t go find her father, not like this.

But what else is she going to do. 

Her shoulders shake as her cries come more openly. 

A knock startles her away from the mirror. “Can I come in?” Li asks. 

Azula makes her way to the door and pulls it open. 

The old woman eyes her sympathetically. “Oh dear…” 

She realizes that she still has blood smeared beneath her nose. “Li…”

“I won’t say anything.” She says, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Here, let me.” She holds out a cloth. 

Azula finds herself a seat and lets Li dab the blood away. “Child, what am I going to do with you?” 

“If you were smart, you’d see me dead.” 

“Then I must be an old fool.” She shakes her head. 

“Yes. You must be.” She agrees. Just like Bujing was a fool to save her and the others were fools to follow her. Just like Lo was fool enough to pick and probe at a space rock. They were all fools to some degree or another and that is why the world is dead. 

“You’re a special case.” Li comments. 

“How do you figure?” 

“This thing, I’ve thought a lot about it. And I have a theory.” She pauses. “It is a disease of the mind and soul not of the body. I felt it with Lo, that it takes root in the spirit. I believe that the decay begins because our bodies can handle the spirits within…” 

Azula nods. She supposes that there is some sense to that theory. 

“They take over the mind and it is easy to do. Until they find someone with a stronger will. Or…” she trails off. 

“Or someone like me.” She finishes. 

Li nods. “Someone with a unique mind. You are harder to navigate and you have a stronger will.” 

Azula swallows. The voices, her lapse in sanity....

If the spirits can’t even work around the twists in her mind, then what does that say of her? 

“I don’t know exactly what this means for you.” Li says. “But you have a better chance then the rest of us…”

So long as her body doesn’t give up before her cognizance. 


	16. The Burning Jewel

Waking up to a painful throbbing in her leg and a fresh helping of blood running from her nose to her chin is no longer a foreign occurrence. 

At first she had instinctively called for Li. 

Now she simply picks herself up, gaters her crutches, and wanders down the hall for her sorry excuse for a meal. 

In the passing days, though with an icy demeanor to match her own, Bujing has been civil with her. Sometimes even inviting her to reminisce about better times. Or to ask her how she is feeling. 

She lies and tells him that she is well, save for her leg. 

But her head aches most of the time and her stomach is delicate and queasy every now and again. 

“I think that we should set out for the prison soon.” He says. She thinks that he is beginning to pick up on the palpable feeling of foreboding. The inexplicable inkling that something dreadful will overtake them if they don’t make a move first. 

Even without such ill premintions, Azula would agree; she is getting anxious just sitting around. It leaves her too much time to think and simmer in her multitude of regrets and physical discomforts. 

To dwell on everything she used to be, what she could have been. 

To realize, with a sense of horror and self disgust, that a part of her enjoys this. She thinks that it is the part of here that sees things that aren’t there. This part of her is glad that the world had gone to shit precisely when her life had. If she is going to fall, the world will fall with her. 

“We should leave the palace tomorrow morning.” Li agrees over a stale, unsavory meal. 

But the parasites decide that they will leave tonight. 

She wakes to their incessant whispers. Their tendrils curl like curtains around the rungs that hold the canopy above her bed. Her ears ring louder as they draw closer. They wiggle about and reach out for her. 

Don’t they know that she is already one of them? 

But Li and Bujing aren’t. 

She ducks under their invisible fingers and within her rises a frenzied tingle as though those spirit parasites are trying to connect with those within her. In her mind there is an itch. A desire to succumb to the madness brewing in the recesses of her brain. 

She steps out into the hall, she comes upon a sight that makes her soul run cold. 

They are inside. 

The hosts. An army of them. 

They simply stand.

Stand rigid and contorted at impossible angles; bent, twisted, and agnonized. In them, she can tell who has been newly possessed, their bloodshot, leaking eyes express a degree of torment and fear that the longtime hosts no longer have. 

Azula’s stomach lurches all over again at the notion that the host is still there, if only a fragment of them. At the notion that perhaps they could come back. 

Those of them that have no humanity left stare at her with lifeless, glossy eyes. 

She holds their stare, waiting for them to make a move of any kind. 

She resents how unmoving they are. 

Growing tired of this game, whatever it is, she takes another step. And then another and another after that. Each accented by the clatter of her crutches. She weaves between decaying bodies. The only thing that follows her is their potent rotting scent and their eyes. 

They don’t turn to stare at her, not in full. Instead, in a series of grotesque cracks and pops, they twist only their heads. 

Azula shudders. 

She thinks that she hates the infected more than the parasites nestled within them. 

Instinct cries for her to call out to Bujing and Li. She holds her silence. She doesn’t need them giving away their hiding spots...if they had even made it to hiding spots. She soon finds that she doesn’t need to, she hears a weak wail come from down the hall. 

Azula goes to it as fast as her crutches can carry her. 

Li’s cry sets the hosts in motion. Azula’s blood runs colder. She turns around and takes a deep breath. She reminds herself that they had planned on leaving anyhow. She calls forward as much fire as she can manage and sends the blaze down the hall. 

She watches only long enough to make sure that the wall of flames will keep raging. 

Satisfied that they will, she follows the echoing screams, hoping that it isn’t too late. She finds the old woman on the ground with her back arched and her mouth locked agape. 

Silver threads dance on her lips. 

Azula’s stomach sinks. She is going to be alone again. 

Perhaps forever. 

She wonders if this is a special hell crafted just for her. Damned to isolation in a devastated world, the last woman left. It will drive her mad, completely and irreparably. 

She wanders over to Li’s contorting form and finds the best sitting position that her legs allow for. She takes the woman’s hand in her own. She is already dying, she knows that much. What are a few more parasites. The creatures seem excited to be reunited, she lets them sliter from Li’s flesh and soul and into hers. 

She falls back, body seizing and twitching. 

They are going to rip her apart from within. 

**.oOo.**

When she comes to there is silver-blue all around. Specters and phantoms scream in every corner. Li sits in the center of the room, she meets Azula’s gaze and shakes her head sadly. “You didn’t have to do that.” 

Azula’s mouth runs dry. “H-how long?”

“Before you, dear.” The old woman says. “They got me when they got Lo.” 

Azula shudders. 

Li holds out a wrinkly hand and helps Azula to her feet. “But you’re not decaying.”

Li laughs. “I sure am.” She holds up her robes. Her wrinkled, sagging belly is pockmarked with oozing lesions and holes. “But it’s alright. I was decaying long before the infection.” She gives a cheerful wheezing laugh as though she had cracked a silly joke. “That’s what old age is.” 

“I won’t have to worry about that.” Azula mutters. 

Li flashes her a sympathetic look and places a hand on her shoulder. “You never know, princess. And if you don’t make it there, I’m proud to say that I’ve had the pleasure of raising you until the end.” She flashes a missing-toothed smile. 

“Where’s Bujing?” 

Li shakes her head. 

“So it’s just us?”

She nods. 

“How quickly had they gotten to him?”

Li clicks her tongue. “They didn’t get the chance. He took himself out quick and easy before they could.” 

Azula finds herself staring blankly at her toes and the floor. She feels Li’s gnarled hand wrap around her own. “Come on, dear, I think it’s time we head out.” She becomes aware of the smoke wafting into the room. She feels numb as she lets Li escort her into the hall. 

Hollow as she notes the darkness of it. 

Hollower still when she realizes how quiet it is. 

They must be playing with her because they don’t whisper. They don’t make a sound. They leave her to dwell on the crackling fire and emptiness of a palace that had once been bustling and teeming with life and chatter. 

In her mind’s eye she can see servants wandering down the hall with armfuls of towles, dipping their heads as she approaches. She sees guards switching shifts. The royal tailor with silk draped over her shoulders and in her arms. She sees war generals passing through the rays of a setting sun that stream through the windows, on their way to war meetings. 

She can hear the lively chatter. The clanking of pots and pans as the team of chefs begin their dinner rush. 

She sees a life that she had taken for granted. 

And she sees a dreary, lifeless, vacant hallway. Coated in dust and full of tattered tapestries. 

Looking at the palace, from the outside is almost worse. To see something that had once been so grand, in such a decrepit, crumbling state. Many of the accents and ornaments on the roof have fallen and shattered on the cracked stone below. Their gold is tarnished. 

The spokes of the flame-like structure have lost their shine. She thinks that they might be cracking. The stairs and walls are spattered with mud and blood, a stark contrast to the time when they had been well-kept and polished. 

Azula is like her palace. 

Or maybe the palace is like her. 

“Come on,” Li says gently, “don’t look at it for too long.”

But she already has. 

She has already looked long enough for it to truly set in that her old life is gone. 

She can’t say why she has done it. Maybe it is a way to make her feel like she has some semblance of control. To make her feel like this has been her choice. Whatever is compelling her, blue fire dances on her hands. 

She sends blast after blast into the palace, until it is fully ablaze. 

The jewel of the Fire Nation is in its natural state. 


	17. At The Gate

The blaze of the palace is a beacon in the night, with any luck it will draw the infected to it and away from them. Burning with it is the remaining semblance of what Azula’s life used to be. Having gone numb some hours before, it doesn’t bother her as it probably should. 

She and Li wander across a beaten and battered path.

“Are you alright, dear?” Li asks. 

The former princess isn’t entirely sure how to answer. She has lost all of her people. Her subjects, what is a Fire Lord with no subjects? She has to remind herself that she had never been a Fire Lord at all, not truly. She has lost everyone and everything. Ruon’s face resurfaces in her mind; his kind eyes and the compassion and trust he spared her. In the short time that she’d known him he’d probably done more for her than anyone save for Li. She can’t help but ponder upon what they could have been were he still alive. 

But then she wonders what had really been left for her if the comet didn’t bring death with it. She imagines that she’d still be miserable and empty inside. The differences lie in that she’d be alone in her torment. Alone and locked away. 

Here she has freedom. At least until the parasites gain control and steal that away from her too. 

“Are you?” She asks Li. 

The woman clicks her tongue a few times. “As well as I can be without my other half.”

Azula doesn’t know how to respond to that so she takes to staring straight ahead. She does so with special care not to look back. The sight of the palace turning to ash is one that she can’t come to terms with so soon after. Perhaps she won’t ever come to terms with it. Regardless of looking back or not, the smoke is so dense that she can taste it on her tongue. A few cinders drop to the ground like grey snow. 

They are reminders enough. 

She isn’t sure how much time has gone by, but night is beginning to turn to sunrise and she hasn’t hurt a whisper or groan of a host. Neither has she seen a tendril nor wisp. She supposes that it is just as well; they are due for a quiet and uneventful venture. 

Even so, there is a part of her that wishes that they would show up. She craves the delay; for as much as she yearns to see her father again, she dreads the encounter. The way that he will probably look at her and her crutches. She doesn’t want him to see her in her weakened state. All the same she wants his comfort while she is in it. 

She flinches to herself as a small voice reminds her that he might not be alive to look upon her as a pitiful creature. 

“You’re being terribly quiet, even for you.” Li mentions. 

Azula shrugs. “Just thinking.” She finds that she likes these quiet walks almost as little as the chaotic ones. They both present their own special brands of torment. “What if father isn’t there?” What if she is just wasting their precious time. 

But then, she considers that they shouldn’t try to reach the port at all. Morally, she has always danced within the grayer shades, but bringing the infection into a possible sanctuary just for her own comfort…

“Then we can head for the Tribes.” Li replies. Azula begins to tell her what she had just been thinking. She finds that the words die on her tongue and so they fall back into silence once more. 

**.oOo.**

The prison looms directly before them. As it stands now it looks more like a palace than the structure that she had set aflame. It’s relative beauty looks more impossible than the walls of Ba Sing Se. It’s sturdy metal paneling, though beginning to rust in places, has yet to crack or crumble. It isn't’ so littered with blood and viscera as the palace had been.

Having done exactly its job, the hosts, from the looks of it, have yet to drag their rot inside and smear it around. 

How cruel it is that what was once the lowest standard of living is now the highest; the beauty in a dying world. Azula hopes that it is as secure as it appears. That there isn’t a grotesque mess waiting for them within the walls. 

She finds that the gates still hold very steady, another good sign. If there are people left uninfected within, she wonders if they are even aware of what is happening beyond their cells. Another ripple of dread radiates through her soul; what if they had never been let out and they had met a similar fate to what would have been her own?

“Help me with this?” Azula requests. 

Li steps forward, her brittle bones are just about as useless as Azula’s handicap. Between the two of them, one by one, the locks that they fuss with fall away. Each with a loud clatter that echos their defeat. The abandoned streets amplify their metallic cries. “We should hurry.” Azula mutters. Now that they have drawn attention to themselves. 

The flaming palace might have the hosts captivated for now, but she doesn’t want to test her luck, being as it is in such short supply these days. 

She manages to unlink a final chain and with a few grunts and huffs, Li opens the gate just enough to let them slip in. Azula finds that it is significantly easier to the the gates back up and relink the chains than it was to undo them all. 

A burst of fire just misses her head. 

She is aggravated only briefly before the feeling gives way to relieve; the guards and inmates are uninfected. 

She isn’t sure if it had been the male guard or the female guard who had sent fire their way, but the woman goes in for a second toss. 

“Do I look infected to you?” Azula asks. Beaten and broken, she certainly looks of that. But infection, it still doesn’t show on her face and skin. 

The pair exchange a skeptical look. 

“What do you want?” The man asks. 

“I want to know where my father is.” 


	18. The Reunion

Azula supposes that she should be reluctant to keep company with the sort of people who take up residence in a prison. But among all other things that it has taken from her, the universe has stripped her of her standards. 

The man and woman exchange glances.. “You’re alive, princess?” The man speaks. 

“For now.” She spares them a snide comment. 

“Wait out here.” The woman says before disappearing into the prison. 

Azula finds herself a spot against the gate and leans upon it. She wishes that they would simply let her in. Instead, they give her ample time to dwell upon and dread what her father might say to her. She will tell him only what she needs to and distort it heavily. She won’t make mention of her helpless days of being chained to the grate nor that she had failed as a leader. She won’t mention that she had a group at all. 

“As far as my father will know, it was only me and you this whole time.” 

Li nods, “as you wish.” 

She hears the screech of metal as the prison doors open. Azula’s stomach lurches. 

The inside of the prison looks, in comparison to the outside of it, rather trashed, though she has a feeling that it has always been this dirty. “You’ve kept them in their cells.” Azula notes. 

The woman nods. “The warden brought the infection in from the outside, several inmates have already contracted it. We can’t figure out how to tell who is infected already nor how to kill them so we keep them in cells.” 

“That’s where all of our infected go.” The man adds. “Guard and prisoner.”

“Makes the disease easier to contain.” The woman continues. “And keeps the violent infected from getting to us.” 

But they can’t seal every nook, crack, and crannie. “Sometimes a new person gets infected regardless.” The man confirms Azula’s suspicions. 

“Do you take many outsiders in?” Li asks. 

“You’re the first outsiders that we’ve seen.” The woman answers. 

“They don’t know, do they?” Azula asks. 

The man shakes his head. “They know that there is an epidemic…”

Azula can’t help but think that it is probably a pandemic at this point. 

“...But they don’t know how devastating it really is.”

Azula scoffs. “You’re fools to keep them in the dark.” 

“Fools!?” The woman frowns. “We’re keeping order. It’d be anarchy if they found out…”

“Well I hope that they don’t find out on their own.” Azula shrugs. “I don’t know what you’re going to tell them when you deplete your food supply.”

“Shall we bring Ozai to his daughter?” A second man asks. 

“Zekyul,” the woman turns to the first man, “fetch the ex-Fire Lord.”

**.oOo.**

Azula hasn’t felt this queasy in ages, her stomach ties itself in knots. Li sits next to her and rubs the back of her hand in an attempt to free her of at least some stress. 

Ozai, hands cuffed and chained, is shoved roughly into the room. He looks just as dreadful as she; long scraggly hair, unkempt and unshaven beard--it is much longer now, and hollow cheeks. He looks nothing like the proud Phoenix King that she had last seen. His muscles have deteriorated drastically, giving way to emenciation. 

“Father…” She can’t keep her eyes from welling up. 

“What happened to you?” He grumbles. “Did they lock you up too?” It comforts him some that the disgust in his voice seems to be directed at the them he refers to. 

Her face falls under his judging gaze. “For a while, yes…” She trails off and gives a nervous shift. She has already said too much. 

“You let your brother break your leg?”

She shakes her head quickly. “The disease is worse than you’ve been told. The Capital is in ruins. The palace is…” she falters. “Newly destroyed.”

Something flickers in his eyes. 

Shock?

Anger?

Disbelief?

“How many people are left?” 

Under his stare, despite her best efforts, she crumbles. “There were about twelve of us in my group.” She curses herself slowly, wondering just what it was that made it so hard for her to lie to him. “They’re dead, father. All except for myself and Li.” She draws a shaky breath. “I...I couldn’t...” She has already dug herself this deep. Perhaps it is her mind desperately reaching for comfort. “I was their leader, I got them all killed. If you had been there…” 

She awaits his disapproving comments. “They’re all dead, I saw them all die.” She adds softly, if only to fill the quiet that has befallen the room. “I’m the only one left.” 

The berating never comes. Instead, he takes her fragile and spent body into his arms and lets her cry into his shoulder. He pats her back, roughly, but she knows that he means to console. 

“I expected no less from you. To survive when no one else can. I’m proud of you.” 

Her tummy tingles with pride and hope before it falls away to shame, “but I couldn’t keep my people alive.” 

He rubs her back in soothing circles. “That doesn’t matter. Out there, everyone needs to fight for themselves and if they die, then they aren’t strong enough for this world. They aren’t worthy of living.” 

Azula nods in agreement. But she doesn’t think that Ruon nor Bujing had been unworthy. 

“This is an opportunity!” He declares with a bold and sweeping arm motion. “We’ll take back what your loathsome brother and the Avatar have taken from us.” He pauses. “We’ll build a new nation for the strong. We’ll build it from the ashes of the nation your brother weakened.”

Her heart plummets and for a second, she can’t place why. She realizes that she doesn’t want to make a grab for power, she just wants to find a safe haven, one where she, Li, and her father can sleep easy.

“You and I. We’re worthy. We survived.” Ozai declares. 

She thinks of the parasites rolling and churing beneath her flesh and abruptly pulls from her father’s embrace. She apologizes and mutters something about the prospect being jarring. He shushes her and repeats, “you were strong enough to keep from getting infected. You survived.” 

“Yes, father.” She whispers. “I survived.” But that is as far as it extends. 


	19. Welcome To The Outside

“I am your princess and I am telling you to let my father out.”

The female guard, who Azula has come to know as both Yoka and the prison’s leader, crinkles her nose. “Do you forget what the world has come to? Your title is null. Your demands have now power.” 

It hits her in double, because the woman reminds her very much of Bujing.

Perhaps her birthright no longer holds weight but blackmail always has stock. “Let him out of his cell or I will personally inform each and every one the inmates of exactly what has become of the outside.” 

Yoka’s shoulders go rigid. 

“You said it yourself, my title is null. So are your laws.” She feels the parasites simmer beneath her skin, seemingly with her growing aggravation. It brings her a new and great sense of unease to think that they might be syncing up with her psyche. She swallows and pushes on, “I’ll speak with that man first.” She points to a particularly fussy inmate.

Yoka chews on her lip, muttering something about never letting another outsider in. “I’ll bargain with you, Azula.” 

“State your proposal.” Azula folds her hands in her lap. “You’ve kept me waiting this long. What has it been? A week now?” 

“We’ve kept you and that needy old hag fed for a week.” Zekyul comments.

The parasites stir within her head. “Li is...was an esteemed royal advisor. She’s still an elder, speak well of her.” She lets a brilliant blue flame flare up in her palm., all the while wondering when she had grown so fiercely protective of the woman. 

“I will release your father, but it won’t only be from his cell. If he wants his freedom, then he can find it in the outside world.” 

Azula keeps her expression carefully blank. She gives a drawn out sigh. She had been planning on departing soon anyhow. “Fine, but I will take supplies as well.” 

“No more than a third.” Yoka says. “We have more mouths to feed.”

“I am aware.” She won’t let the world nor the parasites turn her savage. “I just need enough to sustain us until we reach the port.”

Yoka extends a hand and Azula shakes it. “Zekyul, show Azula to the food reserves. I will get your father and inform him of our agreement.” 

“Let me speak to him about that.” Azula says quickly. “He’ll take more kindly to me.”

**.oOo.**

The sun glares down upon her, it is a particularly smoldering day. “Are you sure that you don’t want to stay in the prison?” 

“I told you that I will take care of you until my time expires, princess.” Li insists. Azula is glad for her loyalty. 

She watches her father squint against the sun. How long has it been since he has seen the light? He grins, “the world welcomes me back.” 

She does’t point out the macabte perfume of burst boils and blood. The rancidly sweet odor of the infected. “We shouldn’t stay in one place for too long. The parasites are around, I can sense them.” 

“Sense them?” Ozai questions. 

Li nods, “we’ve been out here long enough to tell when a predetor is about. Azula has always been good at detecthing them. I has kept us alive. 

Ozai smiles, “the strong can adapt.” She notes his unspoken praise. “Though I did expect more strenght from this nation; more than just the two of you and those lowly guards.” 

If the delapadation all around him distrubs him, he certianly doesn’t display it. “I’m sure that we’ll come across more on our way to Capinal City square. 

“Father, the square has been overrun by the infected. Li and I just came from there.” 

“Where were you headed?”

“To find you…” she pauses. “And to get to the port.”

“The port?” He asks as they continue to walk along. 

“We were going to take a ship to the tribes.”

“The Water Tribes?” He furrows his brows. “What fool’s idea was that?”

Azula swallows and with burning cheeks and an awkward cough confesses, “it was mine, father.” 

“You wanted to run?”

“We can’t rebuild our nation if we aren’t alive to do it. I was thinking…” she trails off, trying to come up with an answer that would saciate him. “...we’d go to the tribes to recover, build our strenght, and accquire a few weapons and soilders.”

Ozai considers. “Yes, I can see the use in that. I shouldn’t have doubted you’re ability to strategize, though for a moment I thought you were losing your touch.” In an instant, it hits her that the last time she had seen him was when he’d left her behind with a false crown. “If the tribes are in the same state as our nation, we can simply take them over.”

Azula’s stomach sinks furter. She isn’t sure if it is as the thought of the tribes lacking sanctuary or that her father is still fighting a war that is long over. She lets them fall into a tense silence that is lost on Ozai. She lets the man revel in his newfound freedom. Perhaps his boldness will fade when the novelty wears off. 

Hours of quiet--which she excuses to him as trying not to draw hosts and parasites to them--leaves her room to think of nothing but the throbbing in her leg. 

She wants to ask her father to carry her like Shinu used to when she complained of an ache in her leg. Her crutches catch in a small crater and she stumbles. Li helps steady her. Feeling foolish for not having paid attention, she chances a look at her father who offers her only merciless indifference. She thinks that he might have scoffed. 

It deters her from asking if they can rest for a moment. But Li, seeming to have picked up on her many moods and subtle displays of distress says, “my old bones can’t take much more of this walking. Can we stop for a bit, princess?” 

One cross look from her father has Azula shaking her head, “we should get somewhere secure before taking any pause.”

Though she can’t think of a single place between their current location and the port that could offer even minimal protection from the hosts and the parasites. 

“What exactly does this infection look like?” Ozai asks. 

Azula points to a gaggle of hosts. “They are completely feral.” 

“They’re gathering.” Li points out. 

“They must be feeding.” 

“They eat human flesh?” Ozai asks. 

Azula shakes her head. “They eat a person’s spirit energy and make room for the parasite spirits to take it over.” 

A cry rings out, accented by the unrelenting whispers and echoing between crumbling buildings. 

“We should move on, they’re drawing in more of them.”

One of the hosts turn around. And one after another they all mimick the first, until each of them stare at the trio with their glassy eyes. Among them she sees a few newly infected. Near the center of the hoard is a host so new that its skin has not yet begun to decay. Azula is certain that it is the woman who had screamed. 

“Do they always do that?” Ozai inquires. 

“No.” Li says. “This is irregular behavior, usually they attack.” She pauses and watches each of the hosts tremor. The contortion ripples through them one after another like an undulating wave. “I’ve never seen them do this.”

“I have.” Azula notes. “Before we left the palace.” 

They could very well be staring at all three of them, but Azula gets the sense that they are only staring at she and Li. 

  
  


One of them breaks from the crowd followed by another and Azula’s breath catches in her throat. She would know those green eyes anywhere, the Fire Nation doesn’t have many half breeds. Even through the infection, Shinu keeps his half blood spouse. 

They are in different stages of decay; Shinu lacks an eye and part of his nose has fallen away. His jaw hangs slack, a spill of tongue flaps around in the breeze. While the half blood only has matted hair and pockmarked skin. Regardless of decay, they are ripe with silver-blue tendrils.

And their eyes.

Azula’s stomach lolls. 

She can see him there, existing as only a small agonized fragment. She can’t imagine that it will be long before his eyes go glossy and he drifts from his lover. 

“Let’s go.” Azula mutters. “Before they decide to attack.” 

When no one protests, she leads them into the closest alley. It is just about as foul as she expects, uninfected bodies lay in slumped heaps, decorated with squirming piles of maggots. If not for her crutches she would be swatting flies left and right, instead they assault and aggravate her. Her nose bunches up in both disgust and discomfort. It is just distracting enough for her to step on a stray entrail. She doesn’t look down to see exactly what one it is. Weeks ago she might have stopped to vomit. Her father is a different matter; she pretends to take no notice to save him his dignity. 

She hustles to get out of the alleyway but halts in her tracks at a figure hunched over and eating one of the fetid corpses. Goosebumps rise on her flesh when it strikes her that no whispers accompany this body. 

It is human. 

It. He looks up. 

His head is turned but she only needs to see his profile. 

“Ruon?” She says softly. 

She almost asks him what he is doing, making a meal of a rotting body. She supposes that there aren’t very many food options around. She carefully stoops down and opens her pack, fishing out some stale bread. “Here.” 

“Oh, Agni, it hurts.” He wheezes, ignoring her offer entirely. “I need to make it stop.” His speech is so garbled that she can’t make it out.

He cups his head in his hands. When he looks back up she understands. She understands and she follows in her father’s footsteps. The entire left side of his face has rotted away, exposing jutting bone and muscle tissue. 

Azula realizes that he hadn’t been feasting at all. He was ripping and tearing flesh from the cadaver and pasting them onto the spots of his face that have rotted away. “It doesn’t stop hurting.” He informs. 

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so disturbing if she knew that he was just a mindless husk. She supposes that, in some way he is. She sees no tendrils writing beneath his skin nor embedded in his eyes. She can’t sense them anywhere on him and his remaining eye is weeping and bloodshot. It expresses a degree of pure torture that only a human can convay. 

But he has been reduced to only that torment. 

She sees on him the insanity she’d seen in the mirror before she’d smashed it.

Maybe a part of him is still around because he reaches out and takes her hand before choking out a gurgly sob. “Help me.” He rasps. “Fuck, just make it stop.” 

By all indications, she believes that the spirits have left his body, but the infection left in their wake still courses through his body. 

“Please…”

She swallows, body shaking. 

She doesn’t want to look him in the eye, but she should at least offer him that dignity. 

She takes a deep breath before taking his request. In one swift sweeping arc and a flash, his body lies motionless atop the one he had been ravaging. A thin trail of smoke rises from the hole she had put in his chest.

She rises and wipes her eyes, “welcome to the outside, father.” 


	20. The Boathouse

She doesn’t speak as they emerge from the alleyway, she isn’t much in the mood for talking anymore. “That poor boy.” She hears Li mumble. “Are you alright, princess.” 

Azula shakes her head, she feels thoroughly ill and anxious. She wonders how many others are dragging around husks of bodies, vacant of both spirit parasite and soul. She wonders it that will soon be she and Li. She leans heavily against the wall of a crumbling building, her head dizzy with nerves. 

“That was badass!” Declares a voice. A wave of annoyance comes over Azula like a chill down her spine. The girl is tall with two long and messy braids and a dusting of freckles on her muddy cheeks. “I’ve never seen someone blast a hole through someone’s chest before.”

“Shut the hell up!” Azula snaps. “Are you trying to draw a larger hoard?” 

The girl shrugs. “They aren’t doing anything.” She glances over her shoulder. “Not since your trio got here.” 

“What are you trying to imply?” Azula asks. 

She shrugs again. “Nothing. These things are freaks, I don’t know how they work. If I did, I’d still have the rest of my group.” 

The implications here are clear. “Unless you have something to offer my group, we’re not taking on any extra baggage. I’ve got enough of that on my own.” Her grip on her crutches tightens. She leaves it unsaid, that she simply doesn’t want to be responsible for another person. 

“You’re whole party is infected?” Ozai asks. 

The girl nods. “‘Cept for me.” 

“And how did you survive?” He questions further. 

“I’m quick. Quick and agile.” The girl says with a swift demonstration. 

Azula exchanges a look with her father. “I suppose that we can use someone with speed.”

The girl smiles, she is missing a tooth. “I’m Zirin.”

**.oOo.**

The girl chatters a lot, a steady stream of pointless conversation that begins with where she had been when the world ended (trekking up the rocky side of the volcano’s outer rim for sport) and ends with the death of her party. 

Apparently they had gone scavenging when a cluster of hosts ambushed them. 

Azula isn’t particularly interested, she only half listens as Ruon’s bloodshot eyes haunt her imagination. Night is going to be hellish if she can’t even keep his rotting face from her mind in the day time. 

“So what is our goal?” Zirin asks. 

She will leave it to Li to answer. She is so tired. 

So tired, and itching to ask her father to hold her. 

But this world has no room for childish inclinations. 

No room for comfort. 

“Where have you been taking shelter?” Li asks. 

“Nowhere.” Zirin answers. “We never stopped for more than an hour.” 

That explains the massive bags under her eyes. Azula can’t fathom how the girl is still teeming with so much energy. She thinks that the girl has reached that manic point where tiredness gives way to erratic vigor.

Azula massages the bridge of her nose. “The port is only a day away. We can get there if we walk through the night and sleep during the day.” She pauses. “We can sleep in one of the boat houses and sail after a period of rest.” 

She can’t see herself able to get any sound sleep tonight, she might as well be productive about it. 

“I need my rest, princess.” Li points out. 

“We can leave you behind if it is a problem.” Ozai responds. 

Feeling cross and moody, Azula states plainly, “you will carry her, father.” 

“Have I been in prison long enough to make you forget what happens when you talk to me that way?”

Wholly exhausted, it strikes her that she doesn’t have the energy to care. She almost tells him that it doesn’t matter, that he can do what he will to her because she is dying anyways. “Things are different now.” She says instead. 

“Spirits, you guys are an intense lot.” Zirin remarks. 

**.oOo.**

Azula closes her eyes and takes measured breath after measured breath. Her head is pounding furiously and she is hot all over…

Feverish. 

She rolls onto her side and clutches her head. She is completely drained, her body yearning for sleep. But her mind won’t let her get there. Each time she falls into even a semi-state of sleep, she can hear the screams and whispers. Moments and memories blend together in ways most hellish; _ Bujing scowls at her as she tugs at chains. “Pathetic. Dead weight.” Her skin sloughs from her bones. The hosts with their dead eyes topple the gates and swarm her. Her hands aren’t her own, they are Ruon’s. She is now Ruon. _ She wakes in a sweat to the sun beaming on her face through the cracked windows. Ozai sleeps like a babe next to Li who is out cold. Granted the woman had slept through the night in Ozai’s arms, but she has had enough strain to keep her asleep for days. 

Zirin snores in the corner on the opposite end of the room, leaving Azula the only one troubled and awake. She puts her head down again and only begins to drift off when she is thrown into another unpleasant situation;  _ The palace is burning, she can see human silhouettes within the flames. A hand reaches out and grabs her robes. “Why?” Chan’s face is contorted in pain. In a flicker, it is Zuko who is burning away. “Why’d you do it?” She doesn’t know what they are referring to. She can’t ask because his eyes have gone milky white and begin spilling down his cheeks. In another flicker she is looking at herself; bound again but to one of the throne room pillars. Her crown juts from her throat. _

She wakes for a second time and sleeps for a third;  _ her face is decaying, a mush slides down it. Her face pressed against the grate, she watches blood droplets and chunks of skin slip through the holes and into the rushing water below. _ This time when her body jerks awake, she doesn’t force it back to sleep. 

It is somewhere around midafternoon when she rises. There is a burning sensation on her chest, her head is spinning, and her stomach is lurching violently. She doesn’t have time to gather her crutches before she succumbs to the nausea. She hasn’t eaten enough for anything to truly come up so she isn’t surprised to feel her throat burning and see a mess of blood on the floor. 

Assaulted by trembles, Azula drags herself to the cracked mirror on the other side of the room. Hesitantly, she tugs the collar of her shirt down.

Her head reels in double time. 

There is a raw and angry patch on her chest. It is rimmed in black and weeping blood and pus. Silver-blue wisps submerge and resurface excitedly in the discharge. 

She stifles a gasping sob. They haven’t claimed her mind, but Agni, her body can’t handle hosting them. 

She tries to keep herself from crying too loudly as she quickly recovers the festering patch of rot. She crawls back into her corner and props herself against the wall as another burning sensation shoots up the back of her calf. She squeezes her eyes shut. 

“That don’t look good at all.” Zirin comments. 

Azula stiffens. 

“Do they know?” She nods at Li and Ozai. 

“Li does…” Azula trails off, she wonders if the old woman is going to wake to the same burning. 

“You gonna tell him?”

Azula shakes her head. “He doesn’t have to know yet.” 

“Shit, that’s why they act different around you, ain’t it.” The girl mutters. “So are you contagious?”

“I’ve been traveling with others like this for a while now. They didn’t get infected until the swam got to them.” 

Zirin nods. “You think that they’re going to let you into the Tribes like that?” 

Azula presses her mouth into a thin line and says nothing. 


	21. The Strong Adapt

She wonders if this is what fire feels like as it splays across skin. The raw patch on her chest tingles painfully as though it is trying to let her know that it is spreading. 

She resists the urge to check, in part because she doesn’t want to know but mostly because she doesn’t want to raise suspicions in her father. 

Her mind drifts to her fire once more, for as single heartbeat she ponders burning the spot of rot. Maybe, by some miracle, it would burn the infection away. 

But she knows that it is too late; the same bruning tickles her hip and lower back.

“We just need to get past them and then we’re home free.” Zirin points. Azula follows the line of her finger to a band of afflicted.

Ozai, with no word of warning, blasts a few of them off the side of the pier. The remaining cluster faces them in unison. “Father!” Azula hisses. 

“They’re corpses.” He shrugs. “Don’t tell me that you’re slower and dumber than a corpse.”

He was the one who’d made the impulse decision, yet it is her cheeks that burn with shame. 

“She only means that rash decisions are dangers, Fire Lord.” Li comes to her defense. 

Before he can snap at Li for her disrespect, Azula mumbles, “let’s just clear the rest of them out.” 

Not that her father needs any further prompting. 

Zirin is another matter, she scans the docks for a moment before reluctantly attacking. Li lingers on the fringes of the first while Azula sets flame to the neglected wooden pillars that support the dock. Several more hosts dump into the waves where they disappear into the murk. The remaining few shamble closer and Azula’s heart seizes all over again. 

The girl’s braid is scraggly and unruly and her shirt is in tatters. Her stomach is wide open and dragging innards. She must have bled out already because the only other thing that trickles from her belly are waving tendrils. In a most morbidly uncanny way, the girl is still beaming from ear to ear as she had in life. 

Some manner of undignified and stressed sound escapes Azula’s lips. A pair of cold, wrinkled hands come to cover her eyes, keeping her from inspecting her former friend further. “You don’t have to look at that, princess, you’ve seen enough already.”

She silently thanks Li for the small mercy. 

When Li removes her hands, Tylee is gone and her father’s hands are still smoking. He looks at her with a rare expression of sympathy. 

It is nearly enough to unravel her. “Let’s just get on one of those boats and get out of here.”

Zirin wanders to the nearest dock. 

“Wait!” Azula calls. “Come here.” 

Zirin steps back and Azula releases her held breath. The has a churning carpet of silver-blue as though the parasites have eradicated the seaweed and took its place. It clings to the rotting wood in an evil parody. “Let’s use that one. This dock is about to crumble.” Azula lies. 

The dock next to it looks just as rickety. But the boat tethered to it, though small, looks sturdy enough.

**.oOo.**

Azula had never been a fan of the open ocean but today, the salty spray is a breath of fresh air. And there is a certain comfort in knowing that, should she throw up, she can blame it on seasickness rather than infection. 

For the first time in a little over a month, she can truly rest easy. 

When night falls, she finds that her exhaustion is finally potent enough to overpower the nightly replays of her traumas. 

She finds herself out cold. 

Her waking is just as unpleasant as she knew it would be. Her belly burns and her chest flares hotter. She finds her sheets sticky with blood. It takes everything in her not to scream. Her blankets are thoroughly soaked and cling to her skin. When she moves them, chunks of skin peel away with it. 

Her head reels with a new found sense of fear. 

She wonders how Li is faring. 

She sneaks on deck and cleanses her disease riddled body with ocean spray. It stings like hell but she can’t let her father see that much blood. 

“Oh, you’re finally awake.” Zirin muses. 

“Finally?”

“It’s been three days.” 

Azula bites her lip, her anxiety swelling that much further. “Three days…” she repeats. Zirin nods. She rubs her palms against her eyes, feeling thrice as stressed. “How is Li?”

“Well enough, princess.” Li declares. 

She wanders to the bow of the ship where she finds her father at the wheel. “Ah, you’re awake. Would you like to take the wheel?”

She peers at the maps he has spread out and nods. She could use a distraction. He pulls up a chair for her. She takes her seat and falls silent. Ozai’s hand is on her shoulder. She flinches as a stabbing sensation fires off in her belly. 

“What’s going on with you?” He asks in a manner that suggests more annoyance than it does concern. 

She swallows and shakes her head. “My leg is just bothering me. I’ll cope.” She has no choice but to do so. 

Ozai smiles, “I raised you well. Your brother would have fallen as soon as his bone split.” 

“I see another ship!” Zirin declares from the mast. “Should we check it out? There might be other survivors. 

Azula doesn’t like it.

Doesn’t trust it. 

The boat is just floating there, directionless. Bobbing without aim. “It’s a dead ship.” She calls up. A new feeling of dread rises, knowing that the parasites have already reached the seas. It is an ill omen. 

An exchanged look with her father tells her that her father shares her thoughts. 

Not that it matters, her body is already decaying. 

She is already dead. 

Whatever control she may have had over the hosts and parasites, the possible answers and cure will die with her. 

She takes her father’s hand and squeezes. 

**.oOo.**

It has been nearly a week since they drifted away from the dead ship. Li has taken to ranting about how this must be the Spirit World’s way of punishing for the war and the disharmony it has created. “Sozin used that comet to disrupt the balance of the world and the spirits used it to take vengeance.” She declares again. 

Azula’s heart sinks; the old woman must be slipping. Or maybe it is simply natural for her mind to turn towards more divine explanations. Azula doesn’t particularly believe that the spirits have the power to embed disease into a comet. Especially not with an Avatar to act as a buffer. 

She doesn’t bother debating spiritual matters with Li. She hasn’t the energy for it and she would like to keep Li as a companion, especially now that her father has taken to avoiding her. It stings worse than the raw patches that have finally reached her neck and face. 

She thinks that she has grown used to the searing feeling that they bring. Perhaps the rot has eaten away the nerves in her cheek. 

Her leg is nearly healed, but the ship doesn’t provide her with many places to walk to. But she is restless so she takes to pacing from one end of the deck to the next. She holds her crutches just in case her leg decides to lock. She wanders below deck to wash her face. The action is rather pointless, serving only to make her feel like she has some semblance of hygiene. 

The face reflected back at her is red, flushed by the warmth of infection. She is beginning to think that the parasites like the heat and that, that is why they have imbedded themselves within her. She can burn them away, but perhaps freezing them out would be better. She had been a fool to delay getting to the tribes for so long. And for what? A man who can’t even look at her anymore. Azula fumbles through medical supplies until she comes to gauze and bandages.    
  


She delicately covers up the oozing patch before returning to the deck. The exposed parts of her face are met with significantly nippier air that tosses her tangled locks all about. “Good morning, father.” 

The man doesn’t turn around. 

“We are nearing the tribes…”

“Do you think I am a fool?” He asks. 

“No, father.” 

“You hide an infection from me and then you imply that I can’t tell when we are close to our destination.” He would strike her if he weren’t so disgusted by the notion of making contact with her.

“I only meant to start a conversation.” She mumbles. 

He waves her off. 

“I’m dying, father. I want…” what does she want. “I want you to care about me before I do. I want somebody too…”

He holds up a silencing hand.

A friendlier hand falls upon her shoulder. “Come on, princess, it’s chilly up here, lets get you inside.”

“Before what!?” Azula snaps. “Before I catch a cold.”

Li doesn’t even flinch. “Before that man takes the fight out of you.” 

“That man is my father.”

“No father would treat his girl like that.” Li grumbles. 

Zirin climbs down the mast, “I can see the main land.” She declares. “But with all of these glaciers to navigate it can take another week or so to reach it.”

Azula is in no rush anymore. “Thank you, Zirin. I’m sure that my father would be interested.”

“It’s almost over, princess. The journey is almost through.” Li reassures softly as Zirin saunters off. Azula isn’t sure if she is referring to their days of sailing or their days of living. 

“Yes.” Azula acknowledges. She stares off at the very distant landmass. She isn’t entirely sure that Zirin hasn’t mistaken a particularly large glacier for the tribes.

**.oOo.**

The auroras, she has always heard, are stunning. 

Mystifying. 

But Azula finds them eerie and unsettling. 

They blaze across the sky with spectral fingers that reminder her all too much of the ones weaving in and out of her festering skin. They lick and lash at the cosmos, reaching out to touch each and every star as the parasites had made contact with people. 

It is more than that though. Azula can’t place it, but she thinks that there is something in there, hiding between the teal and green curtains. 

Something sinister. 

Something that has touched the Northern Water Tribe in the same way that Sozin’s Comet had breached the Fire Nation.

She swears that, when Li and Zirin stop exchanging conspiracy theories, she can hear whispers in the lights. 

Swears that the parasites flick and flit in time with the cosmic display. 

Azula shudders. 

She hopes that her mind is simply clinging onto residual paranoia. Not that paranoia  _ isn’t  _ due. She retreats to the semi-safety of below deck. 

She doesn’t return to the deck until the auroras are gone. 

They are a day away from the Northern Water Tribe and Azula can’t rid herself of unpleasant tingles of fear. Sunlight glints off of the snowy landscape before them. 

“Are you going to slow us down?” Ozai asks. 

Azula bends and unbends her leg. “I don’t think so.” She thanks Agni that she can walk again. She had anticipated her father having to carry her through the snow. In current she knows that he will sooner leave her behind than come close to her. 

His question was a fool’s question; she doesn't need to slow them down, the sheer amount of snow and lack of equipment does that. 

The port is close enough to the city that Azula doesn’t fear that they won’t make it but comfort is a lost luxury. Azula drifts closer to Li the nearer that they get. 

“Shit, I’ve never seen anything like it.” Zirin declares. 

Her optimism is somewhat vexing. 

Azula scans the faces of the guards atop the icy wall. They are stony and unforgiving as the terrain they overlook. If they are guarding the entrance this readily, it must be a sanctuary. Still, her unease doesn’t subside. 

“We’re survivors seeking sanctuary!” Zirin calls up to them. “And warmth. Warmth would be great too.” 

Azula shivers to herself. 

Warmth. 

Safety. 

That would be heavenly.

The men exchange glances. And Azula shares a look with Li, her look of weary resignation is mirrored by Azula. She knows exactly how this is going to end. “Search them for infection!” One of the men declares. 

Li squeezes Azula’s hand. 

Already, they have noticed the distance between the two of them and Zirin and Ozai. “Which of you are the healthy ones?”

Ozai hesitates none before gesturing to himself and Zirin.

“Inspect them.” Says the head guard. 

“Strip.” Commands his partner. Zirin wastes no time. Ozai on the other hand scowls. “A Fire Lord doesn’t strip before peasants.” 

“But a refugee does.” The second guard replies. “Strip or get back on your boat.” 

Azula turns the other way as her father drops his robes. She waits a few minutes after the man calls, “clear” to turn back around. “Put them in the quarantine quarters until we are certain that they won’t develop symptoms.”

The gates open and Ozai and Zirin are beckoned inside. 

“Father…” Azula says. 

He has the decency to look back, but no more than that. 

A normal person might cry, but Azula finds that she has no more tears left. She has nothing but a solemn acceptance. She still has the dignity to hold her head high. The only warmth in her body and soul radiates from the infection. 

She watches her father disappear into the safe-haven. She wonders how long he will last; how long they will tolerate his intolerance and malicious intent. 

Flurries throw themselves violently at her as she stares at the wall. At the glorious sanctuary that she can’t enter. Even if they let her in, she likes to think that she has too much honor to bring a plague to the last cluster of humanity. 

“We’re alone…” she trails off. 

Li nods. “I told you that I would accompany you until my last breath, princess.” 

Just before she pulls her eyes away from the wall, she sees him. Her heart falters. He looks at her with pity and...regret? For a moment, she thinks that he going to plead with them to let her in. To give her a chance. But he doesn’t know that she isn’t contagious--she has a thought; a bitter acknowledgement that the cold might be enough to kill the parasites. That with time, the patches of rot might heal. 

She opens her mouth to try to convince him of this. 

He is not paying attention to her, other than a nod in her direction. 

She holds her breath and waits. 

His attention is fully on her again, his face grim. 

“I’m sorry that I left you there.” Zuko calls down. 

Once again she opens her mouth to speak. She doesn’t have the chance before one of the guards lifts his arms, dragging with them a large spike of ice. Azula’s vision goes hazy, she hears Li’s body thud next to her. 

She looks up at Zuko in shock more than anything else. He winces and mouths something akin to, “she’s not dead yet.” And to her directly he says, “I’m sorry.” 

A red spray soils the otherwise pristine white. 

Suddenly it doesn’t hurt anymore. 

Nothing hurts. 

There is nothing. 

She has time for a single parting thought. A thought that she is free. 

Finally free. Free of torment and fear and paranoia. Free of her own mind and of that which plagues her. Zuko had left her chained up and the parasites had made a prison of her own body. But Zuko has set her free.

Her decayed cheek hits the snow and her body goes still. 

With nowhere else to go, a cluster of pulsating silver-blue wisps burrow beneath the snow. 

The strong adapt. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this is going to be a very controversial ending.


	22. Alt. Ending: When The World Is Right Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not gonna lie, initially I wasn't going to post the alternate ending but I had some encouragement and a little extra time. Plus everyone has been so supportive of this fic that I though I'd give everyone a more optimistic ending. I mean IRL we've already got a real pandemic so...let's lighten the mood a bit.

The gates loom frigid before her. She is so close to sanctuary and yet she can’t imagine ever truly making it there. Can’t imagine them allowing someone so considerably decayed into their sanctum. She scans the faces of the guards atop the icy wall. They peer down at her coldly, skeptically, ready to cut down anything that could do harm to those beyond the wall of ice. 

“We’re survivors seeking sanctuary and warmth!” Zirin calls up to them. “Warmth would be great too.” 

Azula’s heart aches with yearning and desperation at the mention of a kind hearth to sit before. The men look between themselves and Azula exchanges a glance with Li who squeezes her hand. Li, she imagines, looks just as dismal as she. Azula is already resigned to her fate...to their fate. 

“Search them for infection!” The head guard declares, his voice booms over the howling wind. Li squeezes Azula’s hand with more force. The guards have, without a doubt, noticed the distance Zirin and Ozai keep, “which of you are the healthy ones?”

Azula wishes that he would have at least hesitated, but Ozai unflinchingly points at her and Li. The self-serving bastard; and after all she had gone through to get to him too. She practically traded off her entire group for the louse. 

“Inspect them.” Says one guard as another demands that Ozai and Zirin strip. 

Ozai bunches his face in disgust. Almost as much revulsion as he had displayed at the sight of her marred face. “A Fire Lord doesn’t strip before peasants.” 

“But a refugee does.” The second guard replies, giving Azula some sense of satisfaction. “Strip or get back on your boat.” 

She still has the decency to turn as her father drops his robes. She waits a few minutes after the man calls, “clear” to turn back around. “Put them in the quarantine quarters until we are certain that they won’t develop symptoms.”

The gates open and Ozai and Zirin are beckoned inside. 

“Father…” it is all Azula can manage, one final desperate test to see if she is worth anything at all. He has the generous sense to look back, but no more than that. 

A normal person might cry, she feels as though she might, but the tears don't come, replaced insead by a feeling of numbness and nothing but a solemn acceptance. She still has the dignity to hold her head high. The only warmth in her body and soul radiates from the infection. 

She watches her father disappear into the safe-haven. She wonders how long he will last; how long they will tolerate his intolerance and malicious intent. 

Flurries throw themselves violently at her as she stares at the wall. At the glorious sanctuary that she can’t enter. Even if they let her in, she likes to think that she has too much honor to bring a plague to the last cluster of humanity. 

“We’re alone…” she trails off. 

Li nods. “I told you that I would accompany you until my last breath, princess.” 

Just before she pulls her eyes away from the wall, she sees him. Her heart falters. He looks at her with pity and...regret? For a moment, she thinks that he is going to plead with them to let her in. To give her a chance. But he doesn’t know that she isn’t contagious--she has a thought; a bitter acknowledgement that the cold might be enough to kill the parasites. That with time, the patches of rot might heal. 

She opens her mouth to try to convince him of this. 

He is not paying attention to her, other than a nod in her direction. 

She holds her breath and waits. 

His attention is fully on her again, his face grim. 

“I’m sorry that I left you there.” Zuko calls down. 

Once again she opens her mouth to speak. She doesn’t have the chance before one of the guards lifts his arms, dragging with them a large spike of ice. Azula’s vision goes hazy, she hears Li’s body thud next to her and she cringes to herself. They have taken Li from her too, not that she is far behind. 

She looks up at Zuko in shock more than anything else. He winces and mouths something akin to, “she’s not dead yet.” And to her directly he says, “I’m sorry.” 

The first guard readies his bow. “Wait!” Zuko says suddenly. Azula’s breath hitches, her abdomen screams out in searing pain. “She’s not like the rest of them. She’s...lucid. She’s not possessed.”

“She’s rotting.” The guard counters. 

“The parasites don’t do well in the cold.: Azula speaks for herself. “They can’t spread and reproduce, the conditions won’t allow for it.” She isn’t exactly faithful in her declaration, but she can feel it in her core...in her soul that the parasites are anxious. She can’t imagine that they would be if they were safe. 

“We’re not risking humanity's last chance for one girl. A Fire Nation wench at that.” The first guard says. “The princess herself, no less.” Says the other. 

“I ...I can fix this.” She vows through pain-gritted teeth. It is a stretch even as far as her lies go. She sucks in a deep breath before revealing the truth. She supposes that she has nothing left to lose now. “I can...I can communicate with them.” That isn’t strictly true in a literal sense. “They couldn't take me over but I might be able to take them over. Infiltrate the hive just like I took Ba Sing Se.”S\ She sighs, her strength is waning quickly. 

The guards glance between themselves. “I’m an anomaly and your best chance.” She reiterates as her body succumbs to fatigue.

. **oOo** .

She wakes to extraordinary cold. Her body shakes and trembles, her skin red and numb. She sniffles and wraps her arms around herself, unable to work up enough body heat to firebend. Her breath comes out in visible vapors. 

So they are trying to freeze the infection out. 

But she needs the parasites alive. 

She needs herself alive and without frostbite. 

Li shivers next to her, apparently tended to by a team of expert healers. “We made it.” She whispers more to herself than Azula. They aren’t in the clear yet. 

Azula holds her hand to her throbbing abdomen and hunches over in pain. The door opening has her bolting erect once more. “Lion seal.” Zuko says before setting a tray in front of her. 

Azula sneers, “careful Zuzu, you might get infected.” 

“You’ve been traveling with father, we just let him out of quarantine. If he and Zirin can be on a boat with you two for weeks and come out healthy…” He lets her fill in the rest. “You’re in the cooler to keep the decay from spreading.”

Slowing the rot is reasonable enough. But she resents him for trapping her again. She picks at her food; at least this time she will have company and her basic needs met. “You need to get me...us…” she gestures to Li, “out of here. If I’m going to use these parasites against the hive, I need them alive. It just needs to be cold enough to keep me from…” she motions to her chest and cheek.

“I’ll see what I can do…” 

“You left me chained up to die, you owe me this.” Another stretch considering all she has put him through. 

Zuko cringes, “they made me leave.” 

Azula scoffs, “you are...were the Firelord, You were in charge, not them.”

“I’m not going to last much longer in here.” Li interrupts. 

Her glare must be rather potent for Zuko beckons her out. She helps Li to her feet. “If you can’t do the talking, let me.” She says. Zuko nods in agreement. “And watch father, he’s more of an opportunist than I am.” She cautions. “I can’t have him getting in my way. I shouldn’t have wasted my time on him.”

“I’ll let the council know.” Zuko replies. He leads them down a series of gloittering whitehalls; faintly she wishes that she had time to take it all in and appreciate the beauty of such foreign architecture. Azula bites her lip. Since she got to the Tribes, the infection hasn’t spread. She looks at her chest--she thinks that it looks a little less raw and angry. It certainly isn’t oozing. Maybe with some waterbending it will heal and scar over. 

She doesn’t want to get her hopes up, that hasn’t gone well in the paste. 

“I’ll introduce you to the rest of the survivors.” Zuko makes small talk. “You already know Aang and his friends. And Mai. We aren’t sure if Suki and Toph made it. We have no contact with the Earth Kingdom.” Azula drinks in the information. Mai. Perhaps in light of things, they can make amends. 

That is if Azula survives.    
  


Zuko opens a door and with it comes sunlight and a light flurry. 

“ A parka would be wonderful.” Azula comments. 

“I’ll have them get one for both of you.” Zuko promises. 

They cross over a bridge, suspended over a frozen lake. Really it is a marvel, a clean and crystalline surface with a glittering dust like powdered diamond. The arcs and curves of the bridge are impressive in structure and make. It is of a culture entirely new to her. 

Again, Azula is teeming with longing. The desire to be able to appreciate it in full. She turns to Li who gives her a toothless and reassuring smile. Azula bites her lip again and touches her fingers to her bandaged cheek; it doesn’t burn quite as ferociously. 

The parasites within are still and subdued. 

She thinks--dares to hope--that she will be able to finally take in the sights one day. 

Probably not soon. 

But one day. 

One day when the world is right again. 


End file.
